Game of Survival
by Volturifanatics
Summary: A vampire coven in the United States comes across a mysterious vampire boy who has no recollection of his memories, other than his name; Alec. The Morgynstein Coven, specifically Everleigh, "Evie" takes a liking to him, and they take him under their wing. Alec has no memory of what he has done, but his enemies certainly do. Is survival even possible when enemies are out for blood?
1. Chapter 1: What a Wonderful World

Have you ever wondered about how ludicrous fairytales are? Do you ever just sit and watch as time flows by and you realize that in our world, there can be no happy endings?

For example, for what seems like a long time ago now, three kids from my school died in a car accident. I guess the girl who was driving was going just a little too fast...and the car flipped over. The driver got ejected from the car, and the two in the back seat had to be taken out by the jaws of life after the car flipped off the road and hit a tree. One of those kids was my childhood friend Charles. Though we weren't friends at the time, I still felt that he was close to me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I apologize. My story is not one of the grieving girl over a tragic accident...but one of the world beyond, and how a simple teenage girl became someone of great power in a world that didn't want her.

Let's get back to the talk about fairytales. I loved them as a child. I couldn't wait for some prince to come sweep me off my feet and carry me away into the sunset. However the older I got, the more I despised them. How ironic, right? The irony will consume you once I'm done, trust me.

By the time I was twelve, I could see the horrors of the world around me. Or at least I thought I could, but truthfully I knew nothing. I'm not saying I knew everything, but I knew enough to get by at least for that year. It was too late when I realized that.

I had my first "mental breakdown" as the doctors call it; at the end of my twelfth year of life, I...lost myself. There were things that I could do that no one else could, weird things, supernatural things even. Even if I told this story to a mad man, he wouldn't believe me. The doctors don't know about that though, they only know that after it was over, I was screaming and crying in the corner of my bedroom. I didn't tell them it was over a man that I had never even met...

If I were to even hum one note of a song, whoever listens would be under my control and would do anything I pleased. That scared me to say the least, so it was easy for me to keep my mouth shut. Thinking about it now, I'm kind of a Siren actually, minus the pretty part _I_ think, but everyone else seems to disagree. I guess you could say I'm an Oracle of sorts too. I have this weird eyeball that allows me to see visions of the future, but it's not always clear. Half the time I don't even know the people affected by them, except for this one person who kept popping up. The eyeball only appears when I have a vision, it leaves once it's over. The iris of my eye turns to crimson and this black ink like substance flows over the rest. It's quite unsettling to say the least.

Needless to say after seeing some of the things I've seen I'd say there is a good reason why I prefer not to say anything at all. A lot of the times I just keep to myself. I don't have many friends, which made it easier for me when I was in the "mental institution" a.k.a my Sire's house.

Long story short; I was turned into a vampire by a man who goes by Enzo McClain. He taught me the laws our kind goes by and watched over me for three months before my "gifts" got too out of hand and he shipped me off to the Morgynstein coven. Now, I had these gifts since I was twelve, I was turned two days after I turned sixteen. You'd think I would have gotten the hang of them by now. Yeah, that's amusing.

The Morgynstein coven was a family to put it simply. Lorne Morgynstein was the mother and Ed Burton was the father (Yes, these are two men, and yes they are gay. If you don't want to hear this then my story is not one for you). Then you have us siblings. Hunter, the eldest "son" was about twenty, he had an odd gift. He was a shield, only except his shield was both physical and mental. He could shield gifts and physical attacks by repelling them back towards the attackers. For whatever reason, his gift doesn't work against mine but again, that terrifies me. I don't like having that much power. Connor, the second eldest son at eighteen could see the auras of those around him. The set back to that is the fact that he sees them constantly. He had to figure out a whole new way to see once he ended the change.

Next comes Caleb, that little fu...trouble maker. He's the next son. Long story short he can influence your decisions, which is a real pain in the ass when he wants something. He's the younger twin brother of Connor. And speaking of twins...my brother Jonah is the next son. He and I are twins, although he says we aren't, because he was born on October 30th while I was born on October 31st. He's picky on the details of things, but when it comes down to it, we are twins. That's just how it is.

Our story is a different one. I didn't mention him before because it seemed fit to put him here. Technically if we are talking about how long we've been vampires for, I'm supposed to be next in the hierarchy of adopted children. But since Jonah has "walked this earth for longer" he gets the next spot. He has the gift of telekinesis. Just wait until you see his temper tantrums where he slams the door with his mind. It's sooooo great (please note the high levels of sarcasm). Which leaves me to be last. The youngest child and only girl in the Morgynstein Coven.

Jonah was also turned by Enzo, but about a month later than myself. While I was in the "mental hospital" our parents ended up being murdered. Right in front of him actually. Enzo killed the man as he shot Jonah. Obviously Jonah wouldn't have made it if not for Enzo, a fact Enzo _loves_ to use to his advantage. But anyway, Enzo was checking on them; he was going to see if after I could control my urges, I could go back to them. Hence why I was in the "mental institution" and not "dead." I don't know what made him think that I could have ever gone back home, but a part of me wanted to believe I could. I'm surprised he decided to turn Jonah, he made it clear to me that I was an accident and he had just wanted a meal. Very clear. It hurt sometimes, but once Jonah was with me, it was bearable.

So because Jonah and I aren't done with high school, Lorne and Ed decided to make us go until we graduate. You can see this how you like, but to me it was unlucky that we had to finish school in the same high school we went to before all this vampire shit happened. I would have preferred it if I could have gone somewhere else. I could have just disappeared into the crowd and maybe the next scene of this drama wouldn't have happened.

Now that you know the basics, be warned for the last time. This story is one like no other. One may think I'm being over dramatic, but truthfully this is just a taste of what you'll be getting soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2: An Introduction of Sorts

(Please note that I am making up the towns mentioned in this chapter. I am not sure if they actually exist)

Our story starts the day after the accident. I woke up that morning just as usual. Took a shower, made myself look halfway decent and went downstairs to drink my morning blood bag.

But vampires aren't supposed to sleep, right? Yeah that's what I thought too, but life enjoys playing jokes on those not expecting it. I don't have to sleep as much as I do, but if Lorne knew that he'd be waking me up at three a.m. to ask why the sky is blue. He's very scatter brained, so I just tell him the basics. Lorne is a great guy, don't get me wrong, he's just slightly on the crazy and almost bipolar side, partially because his gift seems to change his mood. He can see glimpses into the future of those who sing to him. He sees so much a day that it almost drives him nuts. Key word almost.

He owns a karaoke bar down in Mystic, Massachusetts. That's just twenty minutes from our house in Southdale. Between him and Ed, they were able to fix the basement of an old building up into one of Mystic's most popular hot spots. Ed handles the business portion while Lorne handles the entertainment. Ed doesn't really have a gift per say but he is practically a genius. Running the business is a cake walk for him. They let me work there after school on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I'm a hostess and I occasionally run the cash register, and I say occasionally because that thing is frustrating as hell. You have to slam the side of it three times before the drawer will open.

I'm getting ahead of myself. When I came downstairs, the events of yesterday evening hit me quite literally. It hit me so hard I slipped and ended up sliding down the remaining seven stairs. I laid there crying my lovely tears of blood for a couple minutes before Hunter got put up with it and laid me on the everyone tried to be sympathetic about my dead friend and the others, the only one who really understood was Jonah. He and Charles were pretty close all through school. Last night hurt him worse than me.

It's not the blood leaking from my eyes like tears that creeped me out, it was the fact that it just didn't happen to anyone else...except Jonah on occasion, but he didn't sleep either, so I was basically the alien here. I got up off the couch and went into the bathroom for a moment to clean my face off, before i came back to the couch and plopped down with a sigh. I felt like my heavy heart was pulling me further down into the couch then it actually was.

Jonah came down stairs in his usually black zip up sweatshirt with a gray shirt underneath. He wore black skinny jeans as well with rips in the knees. To complete his emo look, black eyeliner surrounded his eyes. On most people it would look stupid, but on him it looked perfect. The emo look suited him well. I fiddled with the end of my black sweater praying he wouldn't say anything.

"Did someone die?" He asked. His hand flew to his mouth. "Shit, poor choice of words."

"It's fine as long as you do it here, if you do it at school I guarantee you will be slaughtered." Caleb told him as he finished walking down the stairs. "Evie fell down the stairs again." He snorted.

"Klutz..." He muttered before walking over to me. "You good sis?"

"Doing just great J-onah." I snapped quietly.

It may sound like a weird nickname, but that's what I do. I just say whatever name comes to mind. It's really terrible actually. I almost called a teacher a heartless...Well you don't need to know that, that's not what you're here for is it?

"I told you to stop it with that." He groaned, moving into the kitchen. I sat up off the couch and followed him.

"Are you sure you guys want to go today..." Lorne began.

"We're fine." We both said in unison.

"Why don't we do that?" Caleb asked Conner. He shrugged.

"Maybe because we aren't scary." We both shot him a glare, neither of us were in the mood for this today.

Usually, it was the war of the twins between the four of us. No rules applied and mornings were hectic. The best part was Ed and Hunter pretended like it didn't happen while Lorne was shouting exasperatingly at us as we threw various snide comments, insults, and whatever else we could use at each other, even the furniture. Though I appreciated they were treating us normally, I just couldn't get into it right now.

"You guys really don't have to go you know, if you guys don't want to go, it's fine it's not like a lot of people are going anyway."

"It's better if we go, I'd rather sit in a classroom depressed then here. It doesn't feel right to stay." Jonah said grabbing two blood bags out of the fridge, one for him and one for me. He placed them in the microwave and set the time.

"Evie, what about you?" Lorne asked as he rubbed circles on my back.

"I'll go with Jonah." I mumbled.

"I'll drive you guys today, you don't have to take the bus." Ed told us. It wasn't a question and the two of us knew not to fight it.

"Thanks..." Jonah trailed off as the microwave's piercing bell screamed it's horrible noise, causing the entire house to flinch.

"We need a new microwave, that thing is older than dust." Hunter stated as he came in the room. "There's a vigil tonight for them, if you guys want to go."

"I'll go, I don't feel close enough to them to go to their funerals." I said quietly. "Besides, I'm not sure if I want to be in a room full of humans and...and a body for that long." I felt tears prickling my eyes but I pushed them away.

"Same. We better go soon, or we'll be late."

Jonah left the room to grab his backpack. You could tell he just wanted to get this over with, he never cared about being late. Once we drank our blood, it was off to school unfortunately.

As the day went on, I wanted to rip my eyeballs out. That was no understatement. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't tell which people were being fake and which ones weren't. I'm sorry...that's insensitive of me. But you know how when someone dies, you observe the people around you, and you notice things. You _notice_ things, things you never did before.

Maybe people weren't being "fake" per say, but they were more upset about the fact three teenagers died rather than upset because it was someone close to them. It was sad, and everyone here had a right to be upset, for it could have been any one of them last night. I felt cold shivers run down through my body the whole day, it was as if I could sense that they were still here. They were here, that's for sure. They themselves might not be, but their presence is still here. It hangs around the halls like garland on a Christmas tree.

Over half the student body wasn't even here, they should have cancelled. The once lively hallways of preppy bitch speak and haughty laughter was now dead silent...sorry, poor choice of words. But seriously, very quiet. Luckily they opened the library up to students for grief counseling.

I sat at a table with my friends McKayla and Josie. McKayla's usual perfectly made up face was clear of any makeup and her long brown locks were pulled into a pony tail. McKayla and I have been friends for a couple years, we got put in the same homeroom when we were in middle school. She was the only one I would talk to while we were there, minus Jonah. She sat across from me with Josie on her left.

Josie couldn't stop crying to save her life. She and I have been friends since fifth grade. Her family moved to a different street in town and she ended up going on my bus. For whatever reason, she decided to talk to me on the bus and we have been the best of friends ever since. Josie didn't need makeup in my opinion. She put some on today anyway, but it was all running down her face. McKayla sighed and pulled makeup wipes out of her backpack.

"I told you makeup was a bad idea..." Josie sniffles at her words and took a makeup wipe out of the package, using her phone camera as a mirror to get the makeup off.

"Thanks..." she mumbled quietly. "Should we head back to French class soon?"

"No." I said. "Mr. Pearson won't care that we are gone, he gets it."

"Besides, if any teacher tries to do anything today, people are going to be walking out." McKayla added. "Oh, there are the others..."

Jonah and his friends, Grace and Robert, walked into the library and over to us. The six of us sort of have a friend group going on. We sit together at lunch, and we'll occasionally hang out or have a party, but Jonah has classes with Grace and Robert while I have classes with McKayla and Josie. Charles was half in our group I guess. He had classes with both Jonah and I, but he hung out with all his sports friends mostly. He and Jonah would occasionally hang out at his house, but they talked in school most of the time.

Between the two of them, they could divert the class topic onto something completely unrelated for the whole class period, and the teachers couldn't do a thing about it, mainly because they got so absorbed in the debates that they never realized what the two were doing. They played it off like they were asking serious questions. It was rather amusing to say the least. It was one of those things where you would have to see it in order for it to really amuse you.

"Hey squirts..." Grace sat down in the chair next to me. We all mumbled some version of hello. Jonah and Rob pulled up chairs.

"So how are you guys holding up?" Rob asked, trying to start a conversation. I could tell he didn't care if we answered or not. It was kind of obvious but I answered anyway.

"We could be better."

"This whole thing is crazy..." Grace exclaimed. She covered her mouth with her hand. She flipped her blonde hair out of her face, her hair having bright pink highlights that looked even brighter against her black tee shirt.

"It could have been any of us..." McKayla trailed off. Jonah and I looked at each other and almost laughed. If we got in a car accident, the only way we would die is if the car ended up exploding.

"Just be grateful that it wasn't."

"Rob's right, they are gone, but we are still here..." Jonah almost whispered. "We are stuck here living on while they are going on to the next phase of life..." I could tell his words had a double meaning to them, the other meaning being about our immortality in the long run.

"Yeah, oblivion." Grace argued. "I can't believe this is happening."

"Me either." Josie flipped her blonde hair, hitting McKayla in the face. Rob snorted, causing McKayla to scoff in his direction. "Oops, sorry Kay."

"That's the second time you've done that to me today. It feels like I'm being whipped by a horse's tail when you do that."

"How would you know what that feels like?" Grace asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I have some ideas..." Rob mumbled teasingly.

"Shut up Robert!" McKayla whined. We all laughed for a moment before we all stopped.

"Does it make sense that I feel bad for laughing?" I asked, the smile dropping from my face. The corners of my mouth felt like they had weights on them, which pulled them far down my chin.

"No Evie, I feel like it's the same for everyone right now." Jonah responded. We sat in silence for a long while.

I'll save you the boring repetition of things. This is basically what I heard from everyone all day. We all feel horrible if we even smile...This isn't the best introduction of characters in our story, I know. But that's how it is until a certain someone comes along and changes everything.

We sat in the library all day for the most part. We could've gone to classes, but it wasn't worth it. Everything was just too damn depressing and I was sick and tired of hearing all the teachers say that the whole school is feeling this loss and that if we wanted to talk to an adult, they would be willing to listen. I'm sorry I sound bitter, I'm normally much happier. Loss and pain in the same equation don't do much good for my sanity either.

Ed picked Jonah and I up from school and we went home. I laid in bed for what seemed like forever before I fell asleep. I don't think I slept much last night, I was too emotional to even bother. When I woke up from my little nap I found Jonah lying on the bed next to me, watching me sleep. Now before you start romanticizing or making it out to be incest, this was just something he did when he was upset. He's done it ever since we were five, and kids were picking on him in school for being blunt and speaking his mind. I would rather have him being slightly creepy then angry at others, and planning schemes on how to stick gum in their hair. It's happened before...there are worse things he's schemed about.

"Hey..." I said.

"Hey..."

"I was hoping I would wake up and this would be some sort of cruel dream."

"At least you can sleep. I wish I could escape for a while...we have to leave for the vigil in a couple minutes. Hunter is taking us." I nodded and sat up. We both stayed silent for a couple minutes. Neither of us really were in the mood to talk.

"It's going to be freezing."

"And crowded with news trucks. You saw them all in front of the school this morning...I can't stand them. I can't stand any of them. They are just using this to get more ratings. It's sick."

"Yeah..."

"You'd think people would be respectful enough to leave the families alone, and everyone else who is grieving. I don't understand people like that at all. There's no common decency..."

"People suck, get used to it." I snapped as I got off the bed. I didn't really snap per say, but I didn't say it too nicely. I mumbled it to myself but it wasn't like Jonah couldn't hear me.

"No kidding..."

"Yeah no kidding! I'm so damn tired of everyone being so...so...so...I don't know what! Just depressing. Everyone has been so depressing all day and it's only going to be worse tomorrow..."

I don't know why I was so angry at him. I don't think my anger was at him, but at what happened with the accident. They were too damn young...they didn't get to do anything with their lives, all because the driver decided to speed. Just one wrong mistake and you could die...it was too cruel. But that's how the world was, wasn't it. I couldn't help the sobs erupting from my chest and the blood filled tears rolling down my face. Jonah stood up off the bed and pulled me into a hug.

"You're okay...I'm sorry."

"I shouldn't be angry at you..."

"I know, I know. It's fine okay, don't worry about it."

"How can I not? How can I not worry when everything keeps crashing down?! I had a bad feeling when I looked at all three of them yesterday. I felt it... _I felt it..._ "

"Hey are you guys rea..." Hunter stood in the doorway and cut himself short when he saw us.

"Yeah, just give us a minute." Jonah told him.

I was grateful for that, I couldn't go downstairs looking like this unless I wanted Lorne to swaddle me in blankets and suffocate me with hugs. I didn't want to listen to him telling me that everything was going to be okay when it wasn't.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"No, I want to go."

I moved to my closet and grabbed a black hoodie and threw it on before grabbing a black beanie and bright purple gloves. I threw on an old pair of black Uggs before I walked downstairs. Jonah followed behind me as we moved into the kitchen where Hunter was talking with Ed.

"Alright well we're off, we won't be out too long. Probably, we'll be home at eight-ish." Hunter told Ed after glancing at the two of us.

"There's no rush, just don't freeze out there."

We said a quick goodbye before following Hunter outside to his car. The vigil was in the next town over, West Broker, and even though the car ride was short, it felt like an eternity. If only I knew the West Broker town common wasn't the only place we would be going that night...


	3. Chapter 3: Finding an Unwanted Mystery

Damn it was cold. It was so _cold_...I knew I should have put on warmer clothes, but I just wanted to leave the house. I felt cold on the inside though too. No matter how sad things got at the vigil, I couldn't cry. I felt void of any emotion, I guess I let it all out earlier. I was thankful though, I would rather not have to make an excuse about my tear ducts bursting in order to explain the bloody teardrops falling from my eyes.

When we first got there, there was this really weird music playing. Like it was sad music, but it was just plain _weird..._ it sounded like something you'd hear at the salon when you go to get your nails done, but during Halloween or something. Maybe it was off an album called _Relaxation Song for the Undead_. The undead don't like that stuff, take it from someone who is actually undead.

Anyway, once the vigil actually started, people from the community; first a priest, then the sports teams the three kids were on, said a few words about each of the fallen. I couldn't stop staring at the pictures of each of them.

The first one my eyes were drawn to was Charles. His picture was in the middle. It was the picture he took for football the previous year. His dirty blonde hair was swept to the left and his bright green eyes stood out as he smiled. He was handsome, he really was. Charles was always kind too, he was never mean to me when some of his friends were. He defended me on several occasions. Some of his friends liked calling me the "freaky mute." I wonder if they still would try now that he is gone.

My eyes then moved to the picture of his girlfriend, Joline. She was just a freshman, but she looked old enough to be a sophomore like him. Her flawless tan complexion was what all the girls aspired to try to achieve. Her full lips were pulled into a sassy pout and her chocolate brown eyes seemed to be staring into my head. I swear I saw them flicker once...I may be going insane.

The last picture was of a girl named Lily. She was a Junior. I didn't know her very well, but she went on my bus sometimes when she was going over a friend's house. She was pretty tall. Lily was a basketball player, one of the best our school had. She has short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Again, I saw her eyes flicker. If this keeps up, I may consider putting myself in a psycho ward.

I looked down at the candle I had in my hand. I was thankful I decided to wear gloves, the wax was dripping all over me, probably because I was shivering so bad. You'd think that because I have so many things wrong with me for a vampire, I would be a normal body temperature right? Of course not, that would be too easy wouldn't it?

Jonah and I ended up finding Grace and Robert and we stood with them. I've never seen Grace cry before today. She was always so tough, at least in my eyes. It was strange to see her cry. Jonah wished he could cry, I could tell. He and Grace stood arm in arm trying to comfort each other. Rob and I just stared at each other and hoped this thing would be over soon, we were both freezing.

"There's so many people..." Robert whispered to me. I nodded. "These news guys are assholes..." I looked around at the news trucks lined up down the street, taking up the parking spaces for the people who actually _wanted_ to be there for the right reason.

"Would you give us some space please?!" A man exasperatingly said to one of the camera men, who ended up reluctantly moving out of the way. The sound of scattered applause and "thank you's" broke through the sound of a mother's sobs and the harsh wind blowing around us.

"They'll be back..." Grace sniffed. "It's not like they give a fuck."

"I wonder how long they'll be at the school for. I heard that they went right up to Joline's Mom and started asking her questions at her own house."

"They'll be at the school until they get the answers they need, Rob." Jonah told him.

"It sucks." I mumbled. "And when we go back tomorrow, the teachers are just going to continue on with their lessons and tell us we need to move on."

No one said anything for a couple seconds after that. To Grace and Rob, it wasn't like me to speak out like that. I usually kept quiet around them. To Jonah, he knew that I would say what I had to say, and that there was more going on in my head than the radio silence I put out. He eventually broke the silence.

"Are you guys going tomorrow?"

"Maybe... "I haven't slept since we got the news." Grace shrunk into her coat.

"Me either." Rob added. "After everything I just couldn't believe that..."

All of a sudden, I felt dizzy. Really dizzy. This wasn't good, it wasn't good at all. I was getting a vision. I felt pulled away from my body for a moment, and I was looking over everything. I could see the gazebo where the speakers still stood in small group, whispering about god knows what. I could see the tops of their pictures, the flowers and candles sitting oddly organized around them. I could see where I stood with Jonah, Rob, and Grace. I also could see a figure dressed in black walking towards me.

"Evie, Jonah, you guys ready to go?" Hunter asked, putting his hands on my shoulders, pulling me back into my body.

I quickly put my head down, feeling the black ink spread over my eye and the burning sensation as my iris began to change from blue to red. I nodded and mumbled a goodbye to Grace and Rob, before speed-walking away through the crowd of people. Why did we have to stand closer to the front?!

"Evie!" Hunter called after me. I kept walking. "Slow down!"

I slowed my pace slightly, but didn't stop. I couldn't risk being seen by any humans. That wasn't the only reason why I kept going...I felt like I needed to keep going.

"Where are you going? The car is this way!" I felt Jonah tug my arm but I pulled away.

"No." I said.

"No? What do you mean no?! Do you see the freaking car over there?"

I had an image in my head. There was this large shed in the middle of the woods nearby. There was something off about it. Sure it looked creepy; no lights, the siding was scratched off, and the inside was an absolute mess, but there was something else...

"No." I said again, and kept walking. I needed to get there.

"Everleigh!"

"Don't Jonah, we can't disturb her when she's like this...you know that."

"Hunter I don't give a damn! She's walking to the middle of nowhere! She's going to get lost at the pace she's going."

"We'll keep up then!"

I couldn't make sense of their words after that, they sounded foreign to me. I heard a whispering in the back of my head though. It screamed at me, although it was quiet.

 _Help...please..._

I don't know why I didn't turn around then, every piece of me ached to get out of this vision, it wasn't like the others. I could see the inside of shed more clearly now. It was messy, dead rats and their droppings along with screws and nails lay on the floor. Various tools, weapons maybe, sat on work tables. It looked like a carpenter maybe worked here at one point, obviously no one had come by in a long while...or had they? I felt someone's presence there. They were in the ground...beneath me...

 _Please help...anyone!_

It was then when I smacked right into the side of the shed. I fell backwards and landed on the ground. I stayed there for a second, looking at the full moon surrounded by all the stars. I still felt the presence...it was even closer now.

 _I'll do anything...just stop this..._

I put my ear to the ground to try to hear the voice better. Was it really in my head?! Or was someone buried alive underground? Maybe ghosts are speaking to me...great! I'll be going to a mental institution for real now...please and thank you.

"Evie? What on earth are you doing?" Hunter asked.

I stood up and looked around. Definitely the shed I saw as I was walking here. Running here maybe? I couldn't remember how I got here, I just saw the vision and then smacked into the damn building. I walked up the stone steps to the door. It was locked. I punched through the glass window, which was covered in a dust so thick that you couldn't see through it. I reached in for the doorknob and opened it.

"Evie! What the fuck?" Jonah exclaimed.

 _Please..._

"Shut up!" I yelled back. I wasn't sure if I was talking to Jonah or the voice. I felt a hand grab my shoulder before I could move in.

"I feel like we should leave, you already did the breaking, let's leave before you do the entering part, okay? I'd rather not get arrested."

"We can take the cops you know. I can sing and make them forget it even happened. I need to get in here."

"Evie what's going on?" Hunter asked.

"I'm not sure, but I have to get in here." He gave me a quick nod.

"Let's make this quick then."

The three of us went in. I could tell Jonah was freaked. It was funny in a way. He acts so tough, but he's terrified of things he doesn't understand. I can relate though, most of us are.

Looking around, I saw the work tables with the...weapons? Yeah, weapons. They looked like some movie prop. There were some knives there, a bow with silver arrows, all with intricate designs on them.

A long staff caught my eye. At the top of it, long curved blades extended from the silver handle. A stone sat where the blades connected with the handle. It looked like something the grim reaper would carry when he wanted to spice up his accessories. I ran my fingers along it, feeling the engraved designs. As I did so a humming noise filled the air as the stone glowed purple. I almost laughed. Such as menacing weapons glowed such a light, and girly shade of purple, my favorite color actually.

"Woah that's sick!" Jonah exclaimed. He moved to touch it as well.

The second his fingers were close, a loud zap filled the air as he jumped back. With the light that emitted from the staff at his touch, the sound, and the fact that his fingers were smoking, I would say he got electrocuted.

"Goddamnit!"

"Why didn't it shock you?" Hunter questioned me. He seemed to be full of questions as of now, not that I could blame him. I shrugged. Hunter quickly grabbed the staff, and the same thing occurred.

"Take off your gloves and do it again." I rolled my eyes at Jonah and did as I was told.

This time when I touched it, a bright light emitted from it. I was sure I was in for it...but then as the light faded, the staff tapped against the table. It had changed shape. The ends of the staff rounded, and the whole weapons was shorter. It was almost the size of a walking stick, and was a little bit thicker than a half dollar's width.

"Okay, take that with you and let's get out of here. We can have Ed look at it when we get home."

 _Help..._

"Not yet." I walked forward towards where I thought the voice was coming from. It sounded weaker...he sounded weaker.

 _I'll do anything..._

"Where are you?"

"Evie, who the hell are you talking to?" Hunter was now getting frightened too.

"I hear someone."

"Well no one is talking, can we leave?!" Jonah moved next to me. I shook my head and took another step forward. I tripped over something sticking up out of the floor and landed on my ass.

"Ouch..." I looked to the floor where I tripped. "It looks like a handle." Hunter pulled up on it, it opened to reveal a set of stone stairs that led into darkness.

"Shit...we need to get out of here now."

"No..." I protested. My iris once again burned, signaling the eyeball was coming back...I didn't even feel it leave. "I need to get down there, he's down there."

"Who?!" Jonah groaned. "Who the hell would possibly be down there? If down there looks anything like up here, I doubt anyone would be." I moved and started to go down the stairs. He pulled me back. "At least let us go first."

Hunter moved first down the stairs, Jonah was next. I looked back at the staff still sitting on the table. A part of me told me I couldn't leave it here. I ran and grabbed it before moving down the stairs. I was thankful for the fact I could somewhat see in the dark. When Hunter hit the last stair, I heard the splashing of water.

"How isn't it frozen? It's like thirty degrees outside."

"Maybe it's thirty degrees Celsius?" Jonah teased as he moved next to him.

As I approached behind them, I noticed that there was a light down here. Well it wasn't really a light, more like the natural lighting from the moon shone in through a skylight. The ground was covered in about an inch or two of water. In the center of the room, there was a mahogany colored box...a coffin maybe? It sat on layers of stones that put it higher than the water. It sat right under the skylight. The water moved in waves, quietly crashing against the stone wall next to us. It was like a beckoning call.

"Evie, please tell me this person who was talking to you isn't in that coffin."

 _Help..._

Is that all you can say? How about a name?!

"I'd be lying then." I told Hunter as I pushed passed them and moved forward. His voice was louder now. It didn't sound like in was in my head anymore. He had to have been whispering in my ear. He's a ghost, isn't he?

"Please don't be a ghost...please don't be a ghost..." I pleaded as I moved towards the coffin. Once I got under the sky light, I looked at the latch on the outside of the coffin. It stood about waist high in comparison to me.

"Are you sure we can't just leave? We can't unsee what's in there." Jonah wanted to leave. If he were human he'd be shaking out of fear. I opened the coffin as my response. The three of us jumped back and screamed.

Inside the coffin was a boy, about my age, in a ripped navy blue zip up sweatshirt, with a tattered white shirt underneath. The sweatpants he wore were also ripped and all of his clothes were covered in dirt and blood. He had a silver knife, similar to the ones upstairs, buried in the left side of his chest, right where his heart would be. His hands were wrapped around it loosely. It was then I noticed the top of the coffin. The inside of the top read "Prince of Traitors" and I didn't have to smell the dried blood to know that the message was written in it. A metal crown with various jewels sat around his head, almost confirming the message.

"First we broke and entered, then a freaky weapon decides to hate everyone but Evie, and now there is a corpse that's speaking to her. And I thought I was the weird twin." I slapped his arm.

"Don't be an ass. You think I'm not terrified right now?!" I exclaimed. "This is bad..."

"I'm going to call Ed, I feel like maybe we should...get rid of the body." Hunter pulled out his phone. "I'm going to go upstairs to see if I get service up there. Don't touch anything." I could tell the last part was mostly directed to me. I was almost humored, I would have laughed if not for the boy in front of me.

"That's a nice knife..." Jonah said, breaking the silence.

"Take one from upstairs if you like it so much." He shook his head.

"I don't want to touch it, it may shock me. Maybe we should pull the knife out though..."

"Why?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to be buried with a knife in my chest...pull it out."

"Ew gross! No!"

"Evie, we drink blood for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We can't get any grosser!"

"I...I can't do it Jonah."

"Fine, give me your gloves then. Maybe it won't be so bad if they are covered first."

"I don't think it will shock you, I think it's just this..." I shook the staff. It flashed and turned back to how it was before. "Shit! Go back!" I shook it furiously until it changed itself once more.

"How would you know?" I shrugged.

"Just a hunch."

"Okay screw the gloves, I'm just going to do it without them. I don't want to risk that thing changing again." I nodded and stood back.

Jonah quickly reached forward and pulled the knife out. As soon as he got it, he dropped with a splash in the water. I then realized maybe I should have been the one to do that. With the water all around, if it did electrocute Jonah, then it would have spread through the water and hit me, or worse, maybe it would have been strong enough to restart this guy's heart.

 _Help me..._

"Did you hear that?" Jonah asked me.

"Did you hear him too?!" I asked hopefully. I didn't want to be the only one going crazy. Maybe I was already crazy...he shook his head.

"No, something in here moved."

"We should go back to Hunter." I was really starting to get freaked out. I really wished I stayed home.

The two of us turned around to leave. We were just three steps away from reaching the bottom stair when a loud gasp broke the monotonous sound of our footsteps in the water. Jonah and I looked at each other, then looked back at the corpse. The corpse was alive...Didn't I say the irony would get worse? This was only the beginning, although we didn't know it then.

We jumped back and screamed for the second time that night, as the corpse...boy...as the boy screamed back. We must have frightened him. He looked at us with fear in his eyes. His complexion looked even paler now that he was out of the coffin, his eyes were a deep crimson color. He was a vampire, like us. Well, not like me, but a vampire nonetheless.

"Hey...hey there...uh...how are you?" Jonah's social skills weren't the best. If this boy didn't want to punch him, then I certainly did. Why would you ask someone who just rose from the dead how they are? Obviously it didn't make much sense, at least to me. The male snarled and sunk into a crouch.

"What's going on?" Hunter stood behind us and stared at the boy. I covered his mouth before he could say anything.

"Let me handle this." I told the two. I looked back over at the boy and began moving closer to him. He sunk deeper in his crouch and growled. "We aren't going to hurt you." His expression all of a sudden changed. The fear and defensiveness faded into an expression of shock.

"I have...I...know...your voice." I raised an eyebrow.

"Were you the one speaking to me earlier?" I asked him softly. He mimicked my previous motion with the opposite eyebrow.

"I...maybe...I don't...re-remember." He stuttered. He was probably having a hard time talking because he was thirsty. Who knows how long he's gone without blood.

"Um..." I looked back at Hunter and Jonah, who started gesturing for me to go back over there. I ignored them. Something told me I needed to get through to this boy, and I needed to do it now.

"Do you know what happened to you?" He shook his head. "Do you know where we are?" He shook his head, his eyes filling up with venom.

"I don't...remember anything."

"Okay um..."

"Would you mind coming with us?" Hunter asked him. The boy snarled again. "We aren't going to hurt you, but I think this situation would be more comfortable if you came with us."

"Am...I supposed...to trust you?" He sounded frightening right now. If he was going to attack, he probably would attack me since I was the closest. Then again, he doesn't act towards me as he does towards Hunter and Jonah.

"I don't think you have much of a choice. I mean if you were to go out on your own, whoever did this to you may still be out there, and they may do worse than this next time." I spoke softly, not wanting to anger him. "I promise we won't hurt you. I know a promise from a stranger doesn't mean much, but it's something."

"Fine..." He stood up from his crouch.

"Look, I have to go get the car, okay. If you have any trouble, call. I shouldn't be gone for long." Hunter said. "And you..." he pointed to the boy. "If you try to leave, and hurt either one of them, I _promise_ you that I _will_ put you back in that box."

"Are you really sure you have to get the car, I'm sure we could all run back..."

"Jonah, we have to keep up appearances. We've been here a while, the vigil is probably over and even if it is, there's still people around who saw us there and probably saw us walk in the woods to come here. If we leave the car, that looks even more suspicious. I'd rather not send either one of you out alone. I don't think we are the only vampires in the area anymore, and we don't know why they're here. It's not safe."

"It's not safe for you either!"

"Doesn't matter. He's too weak to run anyway. We can't waltz him that close to people, not without him slaughtering the whole town. We don't need more deaths, not after yesterday. Stay here, I'll bring the car as close as I can. I'll come get you and we'll go back home. Are we clear?"

"Crystal." Jonah rolled his eyes. Hunter turned his attention back to the boy.

"I meant what I said." The boy took a couple steps away from me and held his hands up. He looked terrified. It was funny, he was the scary one a couple seconds ago. Hunter's footsteps grew quieter by the second until I could tell he had run out of the woods.

"Well, now that's he's gone, just who are you?" Jonah asked. He sat on the bottom stair. The boy said nothing. "Well?"

"Alecsander...that's my name...but you can...call me...Alec...it's shorter."

"No last name?"

"Can't...remember...I don't...I know her...voice but...that's all."

"Why her voice?" He shrugged. "Rhetorical question dude. Look, I don't know what freaky thing you two have going on, but whatever it is, we have to figure it out."

"What do you mean freaky thing?" I asked.

"Oh gee Evie, I don't know, maybe the fact that you had a weird ass vision leading us all here and how you could hear him through the ground and shit?! He knows your voice! What else does he know about you? About all of us? He could be a spy, this could all be a set up by some witches or something! Demons maybe!"

"I know nothing...I swear."

"What would demons want with us anyway, stop being ridiculous..." If only I knew then what I know now, maybe things would have turned out differently, but never mind that.

All of a sudden, a rat ran across the floor. Alec grabbed it and before I knew it, the blood was drained from the small animal.

"We have blood bags at home you know?" Jonah grimaced at the sight. Animal blood was gross. The poor guy must be really thirsty to drink that.

"Sorry...blood is blood...right now." Then I had an idea.

I could bleed. I don't know if my blood was appealing to normal vampires, but it may suffice for now. I don't know why I'm so different from all the others, but I am. I feel like an alien most of the time because there's nothing normal about me. That didn't matter right now though. I just hope that blood loss won't kill me. I couldn't let Alec drain rats until Hunter gets back. I moved closer to him.

"Take some of mine." I rolled up the sleeve of my hoodie.

"What?! Evie are you nuts?!"

"I agree...with him...if I hurt you...the other guy..."

"Don't worry about them. I don't think my blood is appealing to vampires, but I think it may hold you over until then."

"Evie this is a bad idea! He probably hasn't fed in ages!"

"Vampire...I'm a...vampire?"

"Did that not occur to you when you are the rat?" Jonah asked harshly. I shushed him.

"I should think so."

"I forgot...about that...sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. Now..." I held up my wrist. "Do you think it's going to hurt bad?"

"Evie, I'm about to send you to a mental health facility. Don't you dare do it!"

"Don't make me sing Jonah...I can stop him if he doesn't stop himself."

I ran my nail over my wrist, making a cut. It wasn't too deep, but deep enough for blood to begin to come out. Alec grabbed my wrist within seconds and latched on like a tick. He grabbed my waist and pulled me as close to him as he possibly could without letting go of my wrist. He held me tightly, so that I couldn't escape. Right now he was the hunter, and I was his prey. I was foolish enough to let him get me. After a minute or so went by, I signaled for him to let go. He didn't.

"Hey...hey..." I tapped his shoulder. He gripped me harder instead. I could feel his hands shaking, I knew he was trying to resist his urges and let go. I could feel it. Jonah was next to me in seconds.

"If you don't let you of her, I'm afraid you won't like us!"

Jonah then used his gift and flung the boy all the way to the other side of the...chamber I guess you could call it. He smashed into one of the pillars that were placed in various places around the room. He stood up from his slumped position and began running back at us. Jonah pushed him back again, you have to love telepathy.

"Get a hold of yourself!" Jonah then pulled him off the floor by hood of his sweatshirt. The boy just hung in midair.

"What the hell?!" Hunter asked as he ran up next to Jonah and I. "What did I tell you?!" He yelled Alec.

"It was my fault." I told him. "He was draining the rats, I couldn't let him do that when there was a better solution available."

"You have got to be kidding me Evie, what the hell is wrong with you?!"

"I'm sorry...I shouldn't have done it...after the blood came out, it just smelt...good."

I smiled. He was talking better; I noticed that he almost sounded British. I was glad that he was a bit better now. His pale complexion looked a bit healthier, for a vampire at least. That was my last thought before I passed out. I guess I let him take too much...


	4. Chapter 4: A Turn of Events

When I was once again conscious, I was terrified. That hasn't happened to me since I was human. Maybe I wasn't actually a vampire, maybe I was really human, and I just had to drink blood to survive. I shook that thought out of my head. I can jump of a five story building and be okay, humans can't do that, I'm a vampire. I'm just different. This was just different. It didn't mean anything way wrong with me. Right?

"Well what are we supposed to do?!" I heard Caleb shout. I stood up off of my bed and walked out of my room.

"Maybe we should kill him?" Connor suggested. I stopped at the top of the stairs.

"The pretty girl promised me you wouldn't hurt me!" I heard the boy protest. I had to suppress my laugh. Normally I would have protested that, but I like the way he said it.

"Her name is Everleigh. And that was before you drank her blood!"

"Caleb she's the one who provoked it, remember? She knew what she was doing. Although it may not have been the wisest thing to do, she's going to be fine." Ed reassured him.

"She was right though, it's better than rats."

"Come on Lorne! Think with you head and not your stomach." Lorne gasped.

"I am! Rats are disgusting."

"Anyways, are you absolutely sure you don't remember anything Alecsander?" Ed asked.

"I don't...I don't remember, I'm sorry."

His voice cracked. If he were human, he would be crying. My heart broke for him. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to not remember anything but your name, and the voice of someone you've never met.

"I'm going to go check on her." Jonah said as I heard him stand up. I began walking down the stairs. I had stood there long enough. "Or not..."

"Nice of you to join us." Caleb snorted. "Did you have a nice nap?"

"Caleb!" Lorne scolded as he moved from the couch and over to me. "Are you alright?! How bad was your vision this time?"

"It was different than the others." I purposefully ignored his first question. "It took me out of my body for a second and lead me to the shed where Alec was." Alec's attention snapped to me when I said his name.

"I'm sorry about the whole uh...how do I put it...um...taking too much blood thing. I honestly didn't mean it." He rushed out, venom filling his eyes once more. That saddened me.

"It's okay. That wasn't the only reason I passed out, the vision probably contributed to that. I couldn't let you drain rats...too gross." A small smile ghosted his lips. I returned the gesture.

"Jonah said it was like he was speaking to you." Ed pointed to the staff that was set on the floor under the window. "He also mentioned that..."

"Let's take this one thing at a time. She just woke up."

Lorne put a hand on my back and lead me to the couch. I sat in the middle and he sat on the opposite side of me. Alec sat on the edge of the couch. I'm surprised Lorne let him sit at all, seeing as he was still all matted with dirt.

"When I was going to the shed, I heard a voice speaking to me. Alec's voice, begging me to help him."

"And you don't remember asking anyone for help? Not even in a dream?" Ed asked Alec. He shook his head. "This is rather peculiar."

"I could have told you that." Connor said. "What about the knife. He woke up the second it was pulled out? Vampires can't get stabbed. We learned that a long time ago."

"Maybe he was stabbed before he was turned?" Lorne suggested.

"I don't think so. I think the knife is enchanted." Ed scratched the top of his head.

"Great, witches." Jonah said sarcastically.

"It would make sense. I've heard of witches being able to enchant objects as such. They are very powerful though. Most witches now can't do it."

"Why not?"

"Because the witch generations loose power as time goes on. Maybe they'll have half blooded children, maybe they have a low power supply? I don't know, I'm not a witch."

"I feel like the correct term is warlock Ed, warlock." Caleb teased. I laughed quietly to myself. He smiled.

"Either way, a witch would have to either tap into magic from their ancestors, or be an ancestor to do that type of magic. So either the knife wasn't made recently, or we have a group of very powerful witches on our hands."

"Which is why they would enchant their weapons so that they were the only ones that could use them." Lorne concluded. Ed smiled at him. I could tell Ed worded it so that way Lorne would catch on and do that. He did that a lot for Lorne. It was sweet.

"Exactly."

"Then why is Evie the only one who can touch that..." Connor gestured over to the staff laying on the floor.

"She's not a normal vampire." Hunter said. He turned to me. "No offense."

"No it's fine. Normal isn't in my dictionary."

"It doesn't make much sense regardless. In order for us to get a clear assessment, we'd need a witch to touch it...just to be sure."

"Why?"

"Because this could be something else entirely, something that I'd rather not explore until we know for sure."

"What?" I asked. "What do you mean by something else?" Ed gave me a sad smile and sighed.

"I've heard things about weapons like that, that only one person in the entire world can touch...there's only five of them. There's not a lot of good stories that are associated with them. I doubt it's one of those though, it probably wouldn't be hidden in the open like that. I'm just saying we can't rule that out until we see a witch touch that." I nodded.

"We can sort through all the details of this uh, discovery later. Right now, we have to get Alec set up to stay here." Lorne said. "I bet you want to shower. You are covered in dirt Mister." He bopped Alec on the nose and helped him stand up. Lorne looked him up and down. "We are getting you a new wardrobe tomorrow."

"I'm sure we will have some clothes that will fit you for tonight." Added Ed. "He looks to be about Connor's size..."

"I'm on it!" He said enthusiastically. "Wow I've always wanted a brother!"

"What about me dipshit?!" Caleb asked.

"What about you?" Connor raised an eyebrow and rolled his eyes. "Come on Alec, you get to shop in Connor's closet."

"Are you sure? I don't want to be a burden..."

"It's just a spare set of clothes, it's not a big deal." Connor shrugged.

"No I mean about me staying here. Are you sure that's the best idea? I mean after what happened I..."

"Hey, don't worry about it." Caleb said.

"Yeah, seriously don't. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're sorry that we were a bit harsh to you." Hunter added.

"In our defense, we thought you were a corpse that rose from the dead. That, and you did almost drain my sister. So that was kind of creepy, but it's all good now." Jonah grabbed the knife that was previously embedded in Alec's chest and spun it around in his fingers. "When we find who did that to you, I say we stab them with this and see what it does."

"Jonah, we are not stabbing anyone!" Mother Lorne scolded. I liked calling him that in my head sometimes, especially when he said things like this.

"Yes mother..." He must have read my mind. Twin telepathy much? Lorne groaned.

"What makes you think they'll come back?" Alec asked Jonah.

"You are alive and conscious, whoever did that to you wanted you alive, but incapacitated. Now that you aren't, they'll be back." Ed said simply. "Now go get changed, we'll sort things out later." Connor beckoned to him and the two went upstairs.

"Tomorrow we need to see how much basic knowledge he knows..." Ed trailed off.

"Why?" Lorne asked.

"Well if he's going to stay here, we need a cover story for him for school. Maybe he can be the twins' cousin?"

"Nope!" Jonah said.

"Why not?"

"Because of certain things and certain looks certain people were giving each other."

"Jonah, shut up! You don't know what you are talking about." I huffed.

"No one looks at a cousin the way the two of you looked at each other. Hunter was there, he saw it too, right Hunter?"

"Can I plead the fifth?"

"No." Jonah and I both said in unison. He sighed as Caleb chuckled.

"Look, Evie don't take it so personally here, and don't read too much into it either, but Jonah does have a point."

"Thank you!"

"Look regardless of that, they have been in the town for a while, and people know of their family history. People aren't going to believe their cousin popped out of nowhere and is all of a sudden living with us because he wanted to visit."

I flinched when Lorne said family. My mother's side of the family disowned her when they figured out who the father of her children were. They never liked my father. My father was adopted, but all of his family members live in California. Jonah and I have never met any of our family other than our parents. We couldn't go to the funeral because we were both struggling with our thirst at the time, so we just never crossed paths with either side of our so called "family."

"Alright...foreign exchange student? He does sound British. It could work."

"Ed, can't we just adopt him? I mean I'm sure he'll blend in fine, especially without the dirt." Lorne reached over me and brushed the couch off.

"That makes complications." Jonah said.

"No one asked you." I responded bitterly. I could not believe him right now. If he was suggesting that I had a _crush or something_ on someone that I had just met, I was going to kill him. That's just ludicrous.

"I suppose so, I mean if anything were to happen..."

"Ed!" I groaned and put my head in my hands.

"If anything were to happen, I'm sure we could pull some strings and figure it out." Ed had connections, if he wanted something done he knew people who could do whatever was needed to get it done. No questions asked.

"Well as of now nothing is happening!"

"Do you want me to start talking about auras here, or do you want me to just pretend like nothing is going on with you two?" Connor asked as he entered the living room. "Alec's in the shower now."

"Thank you." Lorne said, again brushing the dirt off the couch. There wasn't much to begin with, he wasn't _totally_ covered in it.

"No Connor, you go right ahead." Jonah raised his eyebrows at me and sat down. He patted my back. "You need a wake up call."

"Can you all shut up?! Honest to god nothing happened I just met the guy!" I shouted. That shut them up. I usually don't bother talking to them when they all gang up on me. It sucks being the only girl.

"Okay, okay Evie, no need to be so defensive." Connor held his hands up in defense. Caleb ran in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Why so serious?!"

"Can you fuck off?" I pushed him away as I stood up.

"Evie!" Lorne called after me as I ran up the stairs. I slammed the door and flopped down on my bed.

I cried, I'll admit it. It was so stupid but I did. I shouldn't be crying just because they all decided to pick on me. They probably weren't even being serious. But a part of me wondered if they were right, that there was something going on between us. It was like my vision was pulling me to him. I don't know why...it's never done that with anything before, let alone anyone. It just upset me that they all decided to jump to conclusions.

This whole situation is awful! First Charles and the others died, then I had some stupid vision, and now I'm stuck with a weapon I don't even know how to use and a guy that I'm potentially connected to somehow! All within a matter of days. This is so screwed up. To top it all off I can't even act normal for two seconds without something blowing up in my face.

I don't know how long I laid there crying for, but it was a while. I tried to muffle my sobs in my pillow, but I knew everyone in the house could hear it anyway. I wondered if Alec had heard what my "brothers" were saying about us. He probably did. Did he believe it? Maybe he thought it was as ridiculous as I did...

" _Is it really?"_ I thought to myself.

Why can't my brain just turn off for five minutes? Honestly it was a mystery to me as to why I would always question myself. I always have, and probably always will. Just then, I heard a knock on my door. I didn't move, I didn't want to. I knew it was Lorne. I wasn't sure if I was in the mood to deal with people right now. It's not that I don't want to talk to him, I do. It's just that he's so _nice_ about things. He always tries to cheer me up, and it doesn't work all the time. His cheeriness can get a bit much for me, especially after a lot has happened.

"Evie, can I come in?" I pushed myself deeper into my pillows. "You don't have to talk if you don't want, I just want you to listen to me for a second." I ran to the door, opened it a crack, then flipped back down in my previous position.

I heard his footsteps move across the floor and over to my bed. He sat down on the side of my bed closet to wear I was laying. Lorne didn't say anything for a while, he just stroked my hair as I continued sobbing into my pillow. It was going to be a bloody messy once I was done. I hope the blood doesn't bleed through the pillow case.

"I'm sorry, about everything. You've had a rough couple of days. I know you probably won't believe me when your brothers say that they're sorry, but they are."

"Bullshit." I mumbled. "They do this all the time. If they were really sorry, they would stop."

"They care about you, you know." I shook my head. "Yeah they do, we all do. I know that tonight's events haven't exactly been the most favorable, but this isn't a bad thing..."

"Now. This isn't a bad thing now. Give it a couple of months."

"Don't be such a pessimist. Give this a chance. Maybe you'll make a new friend."

"And what about the freaky staff? I know it doesn't look like it now, but it changes into something the grim reaper would use on a holiday." He laughed.

I flipped over and looked at the dark haired man. The small lamp I had on in my room only illuminated it a little bit, but I could still see his features pretty well. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled was enough to warm the coldest of hearts. He was a good man, with a kind soul. People like him are rare.

"We'll have to work with it then. Maybe locate the guy to return it to him, and then hope he doesn't decide it's judgement day for us all." His laugh must have been contagious.

"Do you really think this is a good thing?" I asked once we calmed down. "I mean, you aren't just saying that to make me feel better?"

"Well...the past couple of days have been shit. I think that we have to turn somethings positive at least. Just hang in there, we'll see how this goes."

"Fine. But you have to promise me if they start spewing their crap all over again, you'll let me take each one of them outside and make them touch the staff."

"Uh, no. That's unsafe. Although, I'll give you one free swear if you wanted to yell at them." He stuck his hand out. "Deal?" We shook on it.

"I take it we aren't going to school tomorrow?" Lorne shook his head, his black hair moving with him.

"Ed wants to see how much he know intellectually, see if he's fit to go to school."

"Oh god I feel bad for him..."

I remember when Jonah and I first got here, and Ed made us sit in the living room for hours doing a shit ton of "educational testing" to make sure we were fit to go back to school in the grade we were originally in. It was torture. Ed was so excited though. He tried making it into a game, but it still kind of sucked. He was so excited about it that Jonah and I just had to pretend it was the best thing ever. He would have been crushed if we didn't, I'm sure.

"He looks about you and Jonah's age. As long as Alec is up to it, we'll probably put him in school with you all. I'm going to look into the foreign exchange details later to see if we could work with that. That way we don't have to worry about anything..." I shot him a glare. "Just in case."

"What do you know?" I asked him. Whenever he said "just in case" he had a vision of something he wasn't supposed to. At least his visions didn't hurt him.

"Oh my gosh, nothing I swear! I didn't see anything from tonight happen at all! It was just as a surprise to me as it was to you. But speaking of that, you'll have to sing for me soon. We need to know if there are anymore surprises in our future."

"Are you going to the bar tomorrow?"

"Probably not. We'll have to slip out for a bit tomorrow."

In other words, we had to go to some remote area where no one was around. I may start mind controlling the whole block if we don't. Because Lorne's gift has to do with singing, he isn't affected by my gift. Ed thinks it's because if he was affected by my gift, his visions may be skewed based on my personal feelings rather than what actually is. That's just a theory, but true or not, Lorne was the only person not affected by my gift.

"Can't we just do it now to get it out of the way?"

"You need to get some sleep. It's almost midnight already, and we don't want to mess up your sleep schedule."

"You're such a Mom." I couldn't stop myself from saying. He smiled proudly.

"I try." He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "Now sleep. We'll talk more tomorrow."

The second my door shut I stood up and went over to my closet. I grabbed a pair of sleep shorts and a Batman sweatshirt and stripped quickly before throwing the other clothes on. The wood floor felt cold under my feet, so I threw on a pair of Batman slippers I had next to the door. God I was such a nerd.

I grabbed the pillow off of my bed and took the blood stained pillowcase off. It looked like someone got murdered on it, but at least the actual pillow was clean. I didn't even want to look at my face right now, it belonged in a horror movie. Holding the bloody pillowcase in my hand, I left my room. I hoped Alec ended his shower. I didn't want to walk to the downstairs bathroom like this. I also didn't want to talk to any of the others right now. I was still a bit angry with them.

I walked down the long hallway, almost slipping on a sock that was left on the hardwood floor. I mean the center of the hall had a deep blue carpet, but there was still room on the edges to slip. I'm such a klutz. Once I got to the linen closet, I jumped up and pulled on the string which would turn on the light. I just barely reached it. Then I walked further into the room (okay so it was more like a walk in closet with the sheets, washer, and dryer in it, but that's too long to say) and threw the pillowcase in the washer. Shelves were placed between the washer and the dryer on the wall.

I sighed to myself. Everyone always puts stuff out of my reach. I'm the shortest one here and they all seem to forget that. Jonah is only like...maybe four inches taller than me, but he somehow is able to reach everything. Everyone else is six feet tall or more. The clean pillow cases were placed on the top shelve. I jumped up and tried to reach the top one on the stack, I didn't want to knock the whole stack over by pulling out one from the bottom, Ed would kill me. I swear that man has some form of O.C.D. at times. I get it though, I'd be mad too if everyone messed up what I had neatly organized.

I jumped again. I missed and slammed my hand on the dryer. I was about to jump again, but then I saw a hand reach above me. I jumped away quickly and crouched defensively. That scared the shit out of me.

"You wanted this one right?" Alec asked me as he easily grabbed the pink silk pillowcase off of the top of the stack. He handed it to me. I guess he didn't notice my face until now because he looked horrified. "I...uh...your face...it's bleeding..."

"That happens sometimes." Alec tilted his head to the side like a curious puppy. I have to admit, that was a bit cute. "When I cry, my tears are blood, so I look like a bloody mess." He stayed quiet for a moment. "That was a joke, you can laugh if you want. Everyone else does."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. I'm just weird."

"It was because of me that you were crying."

"No."

"I didn't mean to cause trouble for you. I'll leave if you want."

"No." Alec gave me that damn look again. What was so confusing about the word no? "It's not you, there's just a lot going on."

"Is your hand okay?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Why are you asking so many questions?"

"Why are you answering my question with a question?"

"Why are you asking that?"

"Why won't you answer my question?"

"Why do you care?"

"Why wouldn't I care?"

"Why are you asking so many questions?"

"Why did you use the same question twice?" I glared at him as he smirked. I don't know why he insisted on playing this game. "You look kind of cute right now."

"Huh?"

"Shit, sorry..."

"It's fine." There was an awkward silence between us for a second. I was thankful that I couldn't blush. My complexion was at least normal for a vampire. I felt like I should say something else. "Thanks for the pillowcase."

"Yup." He looked up at the ceiling and blinked quickly three times. I wondered if it was out of embarrassment or something. "Your welcome."

I moved past him and back down the hall a little ways into the bathroom. I slid the door shut and locked it. I looked at myself in the mirror. I did _not_ look cute. Not even close. Why would he even say that? Guys are so confusing. I scrubbed my face clean of blood for at least five minutes, trying to scrub away the weirdness that I felt.

What the hell was it? Alec was acting kind of weird. I wasn't used to guys acting like...whatever that was. I'm used to everyone here picking on me now and then, and the guys at my school calling me names. I know my "brothers" didn't actually mean it and just thought they were funny, so that was easy to forgive. The guys at my school were just plain awful about it. I got sort of numb to it; it still hurt a little, but I could handle them.

I shook the feeling out of my head, it was ridiculous anyway, whatever it was. Alec probably just felt awkward because he's in a new place and doesn't remember anything. I know I felt awkward my first couple nights here, and I remembered everything. I can't imagine how the poor guy must feel. Maybe I'll try to make it less awkward for him, it was nice for me to have Jonah to transition with, but he doesn't have anyone.

Lorne said I should make friends with him. I'm not so good at the whole friends thing. He seemed nice enough though, maybe Alec won't be so bad. I went back to my room, careful not to slip on the random sock again. I got in bed and pulled the covers up to my nose. I kept the lamp on, I hated sleeping in the dark.

I stared at where the plain white ceiling connected to the lilac purple walls for what seemed like hours just thinking. Mostly about this whole trying to make friends thing. That was the first night I fell asleep thinking about Alec. It certainly wouldn't be the last. To think that everything I thought about laying there was so simple compared to what was to come...I was still very naïve.


	5. Chapter 5: More Questions Great!

It was so late when I got to bed last night. I woke up at about eleven o'clock and slumped downstairs. I forgot about yesterday's incidents until I walked in the living room and saw everyone sitting there, Alec included.

"Good afternoon sunshine!" Caleb ran up to me and pinched my cheeks.

"It's technically still morning." I said.

"How'd you sleep?" Hunter asked me. I rolled my eyes and walked through the living room to get to the kitchen.

"Fine." I called back.

I knew what they were doing. They felt bad about yesterday and now wanted to apologize. It seemed petty of me to dodge their advances, but I was still upset. I wasn't sure if it was at them, or everything else that's been going on, but either way I didn't want to talk about it.

I grabbed a blood bag out of the fridge and warmed it up in the microwave. I opened the cupboard to grab a mug. The one I usually use was placed on the top shelf. I sighed. One of them moved it on purpose...assholes. I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and brought it over to the cupboard and grabbed the mug. It wasn't anything special, it was just a plain lilac color, I could have easily grabbed any of the other mugs, we had plenty. I just really liked that one.

"You know if you had asked, one of us would have came and grabbed it for you, right?" Connor asked me, picking me up by my waist and placing me on the ground before moving the chair back to the table. I was used to the action by now, he did it all the time.

"Why would I ask one of you, when one of you moved it in the first place?"

"You know we were just kidding yesterday?" Caleb inquired.

"You were, I wasn't." Jonah said as he followed Caleb with Hunter close behind. Once they were all in here, I knew Lorne must have sent them in. Hunter hit Jonah on the head. "What was that for?"

"Nothing happened Jonah." He scoffed at Hunter.

"Anyway, with the exception of your horrid twin..." Jonah growled. Caleb flipped him off. "We are so terribly sorry that we were picking on you."

"Can't promise that it won't happen again." Connor ruffled my hair.

"Can we just get over this? The last thing we need is for all of us to be fighting right now..." Damn you Hunter...but he did have a point. I still stood my ground.

"We aren't all fighting. It's y'all and then me."

"Y'all?" Jonah questioned.

"Shut up. Not the point."

"Look, can we just agree to disagree for now? There's other issues that we need to deal with."

"Fine." The screeching ding of the microwave went off.

"Ouch..." I heard Alec mumble from the living room. I laughed to myself.

"We should have warned him about that..." Connor laughed.

"Oops." Caleb joined him. He looked between Jonah and I.

"What?" We questioned in unison. The two laughed some more.

"Works every time..."

"What does?" We asked. They laughed harder.

"I am so glad I don't have a twin..." Hunter pressed his lips in a thin line. "I feel like that's why I'm the sane one."

"Says who?" The four of us asked. We all kind of jumped back out of shock.

"Let's never do that again..." Jonah mumbled as he left the room.

"Agreed." I said as I grabbed the blood bag out of the microwave. I bit it open with my teeth and poured it into the mug.

"You do know there is this really cool invention called scissors that are used for opening things such as that?" Caleb pulled on one of the strings of my hoodie, messing up the lengths.

"Ed!" I called into the other room. "Caleb messed up my sweatshirt strings again!"

"Screw you, he's going to kill me now." I laughed.

"You had it coming." His jaw dropped in fake shock.

"Come here so I can fix it!" Ed yelled back to me. "You too Caleb!"

"Dammit!" He muttered.

I sipped on my blood as I followed him into the living room. I remembered Alec probably would have difficulty with the smell of blood so close to him, so I chugged it down and rinsed out the mug in the sink. I put it in the dishwasher after that and ran to the living room. The rest of us were used to the smell of someone else's blood bag, but I remember how difficult it was to not run over and steal the mug right out of Lorne's hands.

I did that to Caleb once. He was asking for it though. Ed did it as a test to see how much control I had. He sent Caleb in the living room and told him to just sit down in front of me with the blood mug. That was right after I first got here, so I was still rather new to the whole vampire thing. It didn't go well.

"Caleb did a number on this..." Ed mumbled once he started fixing the strings.

"So it was a good one then?" Ed rolled his eyes and almost chocked me with the strings as he fixed it. He smiled once it was done.

"There we go." He patted my shoulders.

"Thanks." I mumbled and went over and sat next to Alec on the couch. He was in the same place as yesterday. He stared at me intensely. I waved, a bit creeped out.

"So plans for today! Let's go over them one more time!" Lorne smiled. Everyone in the room groaned, Alec included, but very quietly. He'd fit in fine here.

"Just because Evie didn't hear the agenda doesn't mean you have to repeat it again for the five thousandth time." Jonah said.

"Just let him be..." Ed told him, sitting back into the other couch across from us as he put an arm around Lorne's shoulders. Lorne grinned like a little child presented with full sized candy bars on Halloween.

"So we are going to go to the mall to get Alec some of the things he'll need to stay here."

"I hate the mall." Connor snorted in disgust. It was a quiet remark, but we all still heard it.

"I'll be taking the twins and Evie with us. You all will be here with Ed trying to figure out what exactly is happening."

"So basically we are going to the lab to pick up some documents they have on similar occurrences and then we'll try to piece together what exactly happened yesterday." Ed clarified for the others.

Ed works as a scientist in a crime lab about an hour away in Springfield. Because of Ed's impressive brain and deductive skills, he is allowed access to government documents of...supernatural instances that the government tried to cover up. There's a lot of information we aren't allowed to know, but basically the government knows that Ed has a special interest in the supernatural, so they send him out of cover up the things human scientists can't understand. It's all sketchy but his job does get us blood bags, so I'm satisfied with what I know. I'm too amazed with his ability to balance that job and running the bar with Lorne to really wonder about anything else. I guess you have more time to do things when you don't sleep.

"And which exact occurrence are we looking at?" Hunter asked. Ed shrugged.

"Well I want to see what they have on this staff, as well as enchanted weapons. Maybe they will tell us something on Alec's memory loss."

"I doubt it." Alec muttered.

"Why?" Lorne asked. The brunette shrugged.

"Just a hunch."

"We have to try something. Maybe we won't find anything, but something will have to put us in the right direction eventually."

"Eventually Ed, it will put us on the right path _eventually!_ We need answers now, especially if there's some dangerous witches or something out there." Hunter said incredulously.

"We have forever realistically. I figure if we take the right documents, someone will be after us. That sounds like a good starting place to me."

"Okay. So we are going to have to wait for an attack to figure out who is responsible for all of this? Isn't there another way? A _quicker_ way?"

"One day at a time guys, that's all we can do now." Lorne assured us.

"Okay, when are we leaving?" Jonah asked, wanting to change the subject.

"Now."

"Now?! I'm not even dressed!" I protested, raising an eyebrow at him. I heard Alec chuckle to himself.

"I meant as soon as you are ready." I nodded and stood up. The second I was up the stairs I heard Lorne mumble: "Women..."

"I heard that!" I could picture his figure doubling over as he laughed.

"Welcome to the mall!" Lorne exclaimed ecstatically to Alec, throwing his arms in front of him. Jonah and I looked at each other and tried not to look embarrassed as the other shoppers gave us skeptical stares.

"Hmmm..." Alec walked forward and looked around himself. He moved a little fast, so if I didn't know better I'd think he was trying to reenact a dog chasing it's tail.

"Now we can't stay here too long..." Lorne shot a look at me. "We'll have to get back to the others in a few hours." He knew I took my time shopping.

"We aren't going to get anywhere if we stand here talking. We are wasting precious time." Jonah said, mimicking the other male's tone. Lorne rolled his eyes.

"Alrighty then, so Evie, I'm assuming you don't want to stay with us the whole time..." I sighed in relief.

"I mean, if you need me to stay I can..." Lorne laughed.

"It's fine." He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his wallet. He handed me a credit card.

"I have my debit card." He shook his head.

"I told you I would pay for your back-to-school clothes, but then I forgot about it and you used your card anyway. Get as much as you want."

"Yes mother Lorne." I kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

"Pick me up some eyeliner if you go in Sephora." Jonah told me. I laughed. "I'm serious, I'm running out."

"Liquid or the pencils?"

"Both." I nodded.

"I guess I'll see you guys in a bit. Text me when we're leaving." I began to walk away. I turned back quickly. "And make sure you get Alec a cell phone, and when you do, make sure he puts Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja on it."

Alec sat next to me on the car ride here and I was showing him a couple of the apps on my phone. He had no clue how anything worked, so I decided I would teach him how to use it, it being the twenty-first century and all. When I came across those two games, Alec ended up beating my high scores on both games and set the new high scores impossibly high. I can't decide if it was a mistake or not, but he looked pretty happy that I had brought it up to Lorne.

"Angry Ninja and Fruit Birds, got it." Lorne put a hand on Alec's back and started to lead him away, Jonah trailing close behind them. I laughed at Lorne's mixed up words, and that neither of the boys had the heart to tell him about it.

I moved through the stores rather quickly. I didn't spend much, I didn't want to cost Lorne a fortune. If I did, he wouldn't mind, but it would feel wrong to take advantage of that, especially after everything he and Ed had already done for me. After grabbing Jonah's eyeliner from Sephora, I got a text from Lorne.

 ** _ **Where are you?**_**

 _At the mall._

 ** _ **Very funny, what store?**_**

 _Just leaving Sephora, tell Jonah I've got his eyeliner._

 ** _ **We need you down at Forever 21.**_**

 _Why did you bring Alec to Forever 21?_

 ** _ **Jonah suggested it. We need your opinion.**_**

 _Can't you just send me a picture?_

 ** _ **But pictures don't give the same effect! Please Evie, don't make me send Jonah to come get you.**_**

 _I'll be there soon._

Lorne was impossible sometimes. He needed things to be done in a way that made sure the other person really understood what he was trying to get across. He preferred face to face reactions over anything else when it comes to things like this. It was a bit bothersome in this instance, especially because I was on the complete opposite side of the mall, but it didn't take too long to get to them.

If I couldn't follow their scents, I would have been lost trying to find them in that store. The store itself was two floors, and there were several different rooms with various styles of clothing in each. I got to the men's section at last and saw the three standing around the dressing room.

"There you are! I was so worried you had gotten lost!" Lorne exclaimed when he saw me.

"I believe it has only been seven minutes." Alec told him. "If I remember the directory correctly, this "Sephora" store was on the opposite side of the mall from where we are."

"Damn you've got a good memory." Jonah said. Alec shrugged.

"That's kind of ironic, don't you think?" I laughed at Alec's response. It wasn't some light girly laugh, it was an honest to god "I would have fallen to the ground if I didn't grab Jonah's shoulder" laugh.

"Are you alright?" Alec asked, sounding slightly concerned, but there was a teasing element to his tone. I composed myself.

"Sorry, it's not funny."

"No, it is."

"Thanks you two, for making me feel like a shitty person."

"Jonah you walked right into that one." Lorne smiled.

"I get what you mean though, it was meant to be a compliment at the very least." Jonah raised an eyebrow.

"How would you know?"

"It didn't seem particularly threatening. Anyway, do I have to go put these on again?" Alec held up the pile of clothing he had in his hand. Lorne nodded.

"Again? How many time did you make him try those on?"

"This will be three, I wanted to be thorough."

"That's child abuse."

"No it's not!"

"Really, it's fine. I'll go bug the dressing room lady one more time." Alec walked over to a lady in her mid-thirties with short blonde hair. She led him to one of the stalls in the back.

"It's not child abuse!"

"I'm just teasing Lorne." He rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his hair.

"Do you have a dress for homecoming?"

"Who says I'm going?" He scoffed.

"Me. You didn't go last year, so I think you should go this year."

"Why?"

"It will be fun."

"What did you see?" Jonah interjected.

"Nothing!"

"Lorne..."

"I'm not telling either of you, besides, shush up, we are in public." He whispered. I shrugged.

"I think he meant what movie you went to see with Ed." I attempted to return a conversation to a "normal" topic. He didn't catch the hint.

"Ed and I haven't seen a movie together since 1996."

"Well maybe you should go see one." Jonah suggested. "You two haven't gone on a date in a while."

"There's not enough hours in a day..."

"Well it's not like you need to sleep."

"Lorne, we can take care of ourselves for a night you know."

"Jonah, with everything that has happened in the past little bit..."

"It would be good for the two of you to go out." I finished for him. He sighed. "Come on Lorne, I'm sure Ed wants to get out for a bit too, hasn't he been swamped at the lab?"

"Look..." Lorne lowered his tone and beckoned is closer. "He's been working on the accident..."

"What?" Jonah whispered. "Why would he be working on the accident?"

"Something about it seemed off...Ed's been doing all he can but...there's a lot of unexplainable information. That why he wants to go to the lab today." With how quiet Lorne was talking, there was no way the humans could hear us, but the thought of a human listening scared me.

"He thinks the accident and Alec are related somehow." I concluded.

"I can't believe this..."

"Look you two, this is bigger than us. What's important now is that we stay close and help him..." Lorne jabbed his thumb back towards the dressing rooms. "Adjust. I have a feeling we'll need all the help we can get. The poor boy has been through enough; you guys have been through enough, and it's not going to get any easier, but the least we can do is be there for each other."

"Which is why you and Ed should go on a date tonight before things get any crazier." Jonah ended with a smile. Lorne slapped his forehead. I sent a text to Caleb.

 _Bug Ed about going on a date with Lorne tonight._

"I'll consider it. You have to promise me you two will keep things sane at home."

"Yup."

 ** _ **We should have a party. An initiation ritual for Alec.**_**

 _Oh god, I don't even want to know what you have in mind._

 ** _ **Trust me sis, I've got this. See you later.**_**

"Evie! Earth to Evie! Ta da!" Jonah snapped his fingers in front of my face. He pointed at Alec.

Alec stared at me with the same intensity as he did this morning when I sat down next to him. His red eyes were covered with blue contacts, giving his eyes a purple tint. Lorne tried the brown ones on him and thought blue would suit him better.

He had on a black leather jacket with a light gray shirt underneath. I could tell from the ripped black jeans, Jonah had picked out his outfit. Alec looked good though, he really did, just not normal. He looked too perfect to be normal. He went from an attractive corpse to a model for some sort of Greek statue. That boy's cheek bones would cut my face if I got too close, I swear. Not that I'm thinking about getting that close, I'm just making a point. I wish I could look as flawless as he did...

"It's awful isn't it?" Alec asked me with a smile. I shook my head frantically.

"No, no, of course not. It looks good."

"Just good? Ouch Evie!" Jonah teased. I shot him a glare.

"What do you want me to say? You could put him in a garage bag and he'd still be attractive..." And I totally forgot he was standing right there...I hate myself.

"Hmmm, maybe we should get you a couple pairs of jeans that aren't ripped..." Lorne told him, changing the subject.

"Okay. That would be great, thank you."

"I'll go grab a couple more pairs, you can change and then meet me at the registers?" Alec nodded. Lorne turned on his heel and walked away, Jonah and I began following him. Jonah grabbed my shoulders to stop me.

"Someone has to wait for him, to make sure he doesn't get lost, you know?"

"And since I just made a complete ass of myself, you would rather it be me for your own amusement." He laughed.

"You know me so well Everleigh."

"I hate you, I really do."

"Love you too. Well, I better hurry along to make sure Lorne doesn't buy half the store."

He winked at me and walked off. I sighed and pulled the sleeves of my shirt down around my hands, gripping them for dear life so I wouldn't punch something. I cannot believe I could embarrass myself that much. What the hell is wrong with me? I'm not good with new people.

"Ready?" I heard his voice ask.

I nearly groaned. I felt bad that he had to deal with me. I've been a mess. I nodded, stood up, and started following Lorne's scent. It was silent for a little bit, but then he spoke again.

"You didn't make an ass out of yourself."

"Huh?"

"Now we're even."

"What are you talking about?" I was playing dumb, I knew that he was talking about last night compared to what had just happened, and he saw right through it. The little shit winked at me. "Oh that's cute."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't know what I'm talking about?"

"Nope not at all, care to clarify?"

"Really?"

"Now who is asking so many questions?" I scoffed.

"Still you, you are the one who starts it." He shrugged.

"Such is life."

"You have a lot to learn about life pal."

"Seeing as I was just a corpse yesterday?" He whispered.

"See there you go again! You weren't technically a corpse, you were just incapacitated." I whispered back.

"Same concept. Anyway, I have no clue how this little world of yours works, so touché _pal,_ you've got me there in terms of learning about life. Though we are both technically dead, so the question is are we living life, or are we just wandering through it?" I had realized we had stopped walking. He stood behind me and spoke directly in my ear.

"That was almost poetic, wasn't it?" He then laughed. "I'm just messing with you, but really, can we call our journey life if we aren't actually living?"

"That was more poetic, you go Shakespeare."

"That's the first person mentioned today that I actually knew of. Maybe I'm not as unknowledgeable as I originally thought." He smiled at me. "You seem smart." I snorted.

"Thanks. I don't feel it most of the time."

"Ed says you're smart. He says if I have trouble in school you could probably help me out." Of course he did...

"Yeah sure. I mean, I can't say that I'm right all the time but I can help a bit."

I returned his smile. I will kill Ed later for that one. He's smart too, you know, and Ed could help him just as easily as I could. Alec laughed. His laughter sounded so pleasant and easy...it was so weird. Vampires are supposed to be this appealing to humans as a mechanism to attract their prey...I wonder if that water that was on the floor did anything to him while he was in the casket to make him extra attractive...nope Everleigh, nope. Shut up.

"Ed spent half the night quizzing me on various things and I guess I passed seeing as he wants to put me in school with you. Lorne kept protesting it because of the events that had happened, but it's alright. Best we move on." Before I could respond we had reached the register. Lorne was already at the front of the line.

"Oh there you are! Why don't you hand me those and you two head out and Jonah and I will meet you out there!"

Lorne took the pile of clothes from Alec's hands and pushed us towards the door. I was confused by his actions, but the two of us did as Lorne said. As we were leaving, a cluster of human girls walked past us. I heard Alec inhale sharply as they passed. He smelt their blood, as did I. One of them had a different blood type than the rest, probably AB or something, but it smelt delectable. My mouth was nearly watering and I had blood earlier, so I can't imagine how Alec is feeling. Whatever blood he drank last probably didn't fully satisfy him. I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the store before he could act. I saw it in his eyes that he would have if I didn't intervene. I didn't stop outside the store, I dragged Alec right out of there and to the car. He wouldn't have lasted long without loosing it.

Why would Lorne even think of bringing him out? Ed probably wanted to test his control. I don't care how smart Ed is, that is such a stupid idea. I mean putting Alec through that much strain...I should probably be thinking more of the humans who would have been slaughtered, but I can relate to Alec better than I can some stupid humans. Not all of them are stupid...but honestly sometimes I can't stand them. It's probably best to treat him as a newborn until we learn more about him.

"Hey...are you going to let go anytime soon?" Alec asked, snapping me out of my thoughts. I looked down at our hands. I had my right hand wrapped firmly around his wrist, so firmly that cracks were starting to form. I let go quickly.

"I...um...sorry." I hung my head low, not wanting to meet his gaze. I could feel it on me. It was annoying.

"Don't fret about it. I'm glad you got us out of there. I don't think I could handle the disgusting smell of food any longer."

"Like that's why you let me drag you out of there. I'm surprised you didn't struggle." He laughed. That god damned smile on his face...

"That would have looked more conspicuous. I mean for starters, you are short and tiny and don't look like you could take someone the size of me."

"Excuse me?"

"Not like that! I just meant like in a fight, and obviously you could take me...in a fight! Definitely in a fight!" It was my turn to laugh. I knew he was talking about a fight but he just made this whole situation something more, my mind didn't even go there. He was fun to mess with though.

"Yeah okay then. Fight me, right here, right now."

"And bruise my fragile ego even more? No thank you. I'd like to think I'd have a fair chance against you and I don't want to change that view at the moment."

"Fair enough." He casually leaned back against the car. "Did Lorne drive you bonkers yet?" He shrugged.

"Let's just say I have never met anyone like him, which is a funny thing to say, seeing as I don't remember meeting anyone else."

"Wait until you see him at the bar."

"Oh god, we can get drunk?! Where is this bar, can we take a detour for entertainment purposes?"

"No, we can't get drunk! Ed and Lorne own a bar a little ways from home. I work there a couple days a week. If you think he's bad at home, just wait until you see him with drunk humans." I leaned closer to him. "Off the record, Connor and Caleb are trying to find a way to get drunk."

"How's that going for them?"

"Lot's of upchuck."

"What's upchuck?"

"You know..." I made a gagging sound and pretended to puke my guts up on the ground.

"So vomiting then? Lots of vomiting?"

"Yup. Gross as hell. I think they will figure it out eventually though. We have time."

"How do you guys live here? There's just so many people everywhere..."

"You get used to it eventually. It's really hard at first, I won't lie. You just have to remember that everyone else went through the same thing you are now...well, not exactly, but you get the gist. We just have to be there for each other." He smiled.

"This is all so feels like a dream...it really does." Alec's smile suddenly dropped. He stumbled about a bit before dropping to the ground. This time, it was his turn to pass out. I had to haul his unconscious body into the car and tell Jonah and Lorne to run before someone called the police. It probably looked like I drugged and or murdered him.


	6. Chapter 6: Similarities and Differences

(The lyrics from the song Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls are used in this chapter)

So as it turns out, Alec can sleep. He was so tired that he just passed out...in the middle of the freaking parking lot. To be fair to him, he did just come out of a corpse coma and then spent hours trying to adapt to life as well as go through intellectual testing with Ed. That had to be taxing on a person. It makes me exhausted just thinking about it. To set the scene, we are now standing in Alec's room that had just recently been a guest bedroom in which Lorne had quickly fixed up for a permanent stay. Ed had just gotten back with the others from the lab as Alec was waking up.

"So sleeping isn't normal?" Alec had asked, sitting up. His hair was a mess. He snores too; at least it's not obnoxiously loud.

"Nope. I mean Evie sleeps too, so in some respects it is." Hunter told him.

"Evie isn't normal, so..." Caleb shrugged. "I don't know if she counts..." I shot him a glare.

"Well Alec did drink her blood, so maybe that had some effects. Maybe we should do some tests." Ed began pacing the room, running a hand in his short, dark hair.

"Nope." Lorne and I protested at the same time.

"Why not?"

"Tests means you are going to stick me with needles for hours at the lab. Nope! Sorry, not happening again."

"Fine then we'll just test Alec."

"How big are the needles we are talking here?" Alec asked, more to me than to Ed.

"Huge." I said, raising my eyebrows at him. He shook his head frantically. Ed sighed.

"It wouldn't take too long, and I could do it right here, I brought some stuff home from the lab and..."

"Maybe we should wait a little bit, dear. If Alec's ability to sleep doesn't go away maybe then we can try to test the both of them then, alright? Why don't you show us what you guys found at the lab?" Lorne suggested. Ed nodded and grabbed a file folder from the night stand.

"I know it isn't much, but it is something. We've got occurances dating back to about 2001."

"I thought this would be some ancient shit?" Jonah questioned.

"Wait until you see what we have in the trunk. We have to see if Evie can touch it."

"You found another staff?" Lorne questioned.

"A cross bow. Here's the thing though, the humans have deemed it toxic because whoever touches it gets severe burns. They can't remember what happened before they touched it...their minds were erased entirely." Connor said excitedly.

"So you want me to touch something that can potentially erase my mind, I'll pass." I backed behind Jonah out of instinct. I could hear the old wooden floor creaking with every step. It was very eerie and unsettling.

"Well when I touched it, nothing happened other than the whole shock thing that happens when we touch that staff." Caleb shrugged. "That was _before_ Ed told us the whole story behind it though." He shot Ed and accusing look.

"I told you not to touch anything. It isn't my fault that you didn't listen and did it while my back was turned. There is a lot of dangerous stuff in there."

"Anyways, we think that the cross bow is similar to the staff." Hunter explained. "Whatever these are and whoever made them only designed them for one person, a supernatural person. Humans were never meant to be involved in this."

"Well there's no turning back now, we know too much." Jonah replied. "And even if we could back out, there is a link to us and whatever this whole situation is."

"You can just say that I'm the reason, you don't have to be so cryptic." I mumbled.

"I probably play a part in it, it's not just you." Alec told me as he stood up off the bed. His smile was supposed to be reassuring, but I felt as though the world was about to collapse. It was rocking back and forth underneath my feet, waiting for me to trip and slip away...

"This still doesn't explain your situation though."

"I was getting to that Evie. We actually have something that does." Ed informed as he flipped through the file folder. "October 31, 2001. A man was found in Southdale park with a sword embedded in his chest. The human girl who found the man called 911. When the police got there, they found the girl drained of blood and the sword in her hand. The man was never found so the state presumed him dead."

"That could be a Halloween prank, as I said back at the lab. It may have just gone horrible wrong because a vampire came in all thirsty and shit." Caleb reasoned.

"Yeah but why would that happen on the day Evie was born?" Jonah questioned.

"Newsflash, not everything is about Evie." Connor looked to me. "No offense."

"I'd rather have this not have anything to do with me."

"Well with your connection to the staff, as the fact that you found the staff with similar weapons in the same place where you found Alec with that knife embedded in his chest, I'm thinking that whoever made the weapons was mass producing them. The staff and cross bow are something else entirely and may or may not be related to the weapons. And if it were a simple vampire attack it would have been easily covered up and the file wouldn't be placed in the restricted room. There would have been more than one body found nearby too." Ed thought aloud.

"And with the cross bow erasing human memories, it's probably the same type of magic that formed them, given that Alec also has memory issues." Lorne added.

"Which would mean the same coven of witches would be creating them. But for what?"

"World domination!" Connor shouted.

"If the witches were going for world domination, then I don't think they would erase the memories of humans. They probably want control of the supernatural world." Alec suggested. "That still leaves the question as to why they would even want that?" I was surprised by Alec's input. I'm having a hard time processing all of this, and I can't even begin to fathom how he must feel. I could barely tell when words were leaving my mouth anymore, but I still spoke anyway.

"Does it say the name of the man who was found?" I asked.

"Pauley Sutherdale...the name sounds familiar." Lorne scratched the top of his head.

"That was the name of the vampire who helped get you the bar, wasn't it?"

"Oh shit! It totally was! The short ginger guy!" Caleb clapped and rubbed his hands together. "We've got a lead!"

"We got the bar in 2015, so it would have been fourteen years since that incident. That would have been enough time to come up with an identity. Pauley is at the top of the business industry now." Ed sighed.

"What kind of business?" Alec raised an eyebrow.

"He deals in supernatural affairs...a little of this and that. Sometimes he is a realtor, other times he's in entertainment. He's at the multimillionare level now."

"Ed, there is no way that could have happened in fourteen years...I mean he would of had to have gotten a grasp on whatever happened to him first and-"

"Lorne trust me on this one. It did. It had to of. Even though it was only fourteen years, I bet a lot of supernaturals want services from like minded people rather than humans. You know how much we paid for him just to show us the bar. He was also from the city, so there are tons more supernaturals there. I think we had better talk to him."

"But what if it isn't him? Or what if we get dragged farther into this then we have to be?"

"We'll never know if we don't try, Hunter." Lorne said.

"What are you going to do? March to his office and demand he tells you everything. This guy has probably spent so much time on starting over, he'll want to leave all of that in the past."

"We'll tell him we want to get Evie into entertainment."

"What?! Lorne are you crazy?"

"You dance, you sing. It'll be fine."

"I take dance classes for fun, not to actually do it professionally, I would never make it. And with my gift..."

"And with your gift, you could have any audience enthralled by you. Don't be so modest about your dancing either, Nico has told you that you are the best in that studio, you can't ignore that."

Nico Palmer is the owner of Palmer's Studio of Dance downtown. I have been dancing there since I was three. Nico has been such a wonderful instructor to work with over the years, and he has told me several times that I should try to go into dancing professionally. He's been trying so hard to convince me that he's even got Lorne in on it. I suppose he'll get his wish now. I would love to dance professionally, but with the whole vampire never aging thing, and the fact that I'm already such a perfectionist, I feel like I would stress myself out about it and it wouldn't be fun anymore.

"I guess we can give it a shot." I said. I couldn't stand Lorne's puppy dog eyes anymore, it was making me feel bad. "For the sake of following the lead."

"You have to call Nico! He'll be so excited."

"You make the appointment with Pauley first."

"Will do!"

"What happens if the appointment with Pauley goes well? What about when he realizes that we aren't in it for the dancing or whatever the hell we're pitching here?"

"Evie..." Lorne placed his hands on my shoulders. "I have a plan! Trust!"

"Do I get to be in on it?"

"Not until the time comes!"

"Can I get some help bringing some of the evidence we brought back from the lab into the garage, please?" Ed asked, summoning us out of the room. He winked at me, as if to tell me he'll handle Lorne from here. I'm just glad Ed is able to balance him out. As we all moved to leave, Lorne decided he needed to scold Alec.

"You better be wearing shoes out there mister! It's cold!" Lorne crossed his arms and tapped his foot. Alec gave me an awkward smile.

"Right, shoes are a thing. I forgot about those." He slipped on a pair of sneakers and moved out of the room. Lorne smiled at him and patted his back as he walked by. I laughed to myself.

"What?"

"Nothing. Poor Alec, forgetting his shoes...you have to go easy on him Mother Lorne..."

"I can't help it. I have to make sure all my children are safe and warm. Call it my motherly instincts." Lorne rolled his eyes, causing me to laugh again as we moved down the stairs.

"How's the date night planning going?"

"I'm having a feeling there won't be one."

"Did you even ask?"

"No."

"How do you know if you didn't ask?"

"Ed seems stressed. He probably just wants to take it easy tonight."

"Well then you can go on a calming date..."

"What about you though? We were supposed to go to our spot tonight so you could sing for me, remember?"

"Well we can do that first, then I can help you form a text saying that you'll drop by to pick him up and you guys can go somewhere? How does that sound?"

"We'll see about that last part, make sure you grab a coat."

Lorne drove to our spot about thirty minutes in the direction of the more forested area of town. Lorne chattered about probably everything that ever existed on the way there. To be quite honest, I wasn't really listening. It was a bad habit of mine; it's so bad that I can time out the "yups" and "hmmmms" of each conversation unintentionally. I really don't mean to, but my mind just wanders. Right now it was wandering to why the hell I was the only one who could touch the damn staff.

As it turns out, I can't touch the cross bow. I feel bad for the others when they touched my staff, no, the staff. I don't know if it's technically mine. Anyways, it hurt like a bitch. I wondered how many of those weapons are out there, but I realized that wasn't what really worried me. What worried me was why _I_ was able to touch the staff. Why me? It just didn't make sense. Or did it? I mean I'm too weird for a normal vampire, so maybe it's because of this. Maybe I have something the rest of them don't, or maybe I lack something. It was probably the latter.

Moving on from my life crisis I had while in the car, we eventually arrived to our spot. It was up on a hill just on the edge of the city. No one could see us due to the dark night enveloping the forest behind us, but we could see all the city lights that sparkled from the busy life below. It was as bright as all the stars in the galaxy, brought down to earth for our viewing pleasure. Lorne parked with the car facing the city and we hopped onto the hood. I placed my feet on the guardrail to steady myself.

"Do we even want to know?" I found myself asking after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"Probably not."

"I don't get it..."

"Which part?" I snorted at his question and felt a small smile creep on my face.

"All of it."

"Don't look at this whole situation as a bad thing...just think about it as a really large bump in the road that we have to get over, and maybe on the other end we'll find an explanation."

"This whole thing is dangerous. We have no idea what we stumbled into...what I stumbled into."

"Don't blame yourself..."

"Well I'm the one with the freaky eyeball that led us to all this. I mean think about it, if this is really as bad as it seems..."

"Then we'll deal with it together." Lorne grabbed my hand. I was so cold that he felt pretty warm to me.

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be."

"Yeah we should just blame Enzo for bringing me here right?"

"Okay Enzo is...a very different sort of person. He doesn't know how to handle difficult times."

"I believe the word he used when dropping Jonah and I on your doorstep was "complications" which when you think about it was probably one of the most accurate things he could have said about me. He was wrong about Jonah though, he always was."

"I know it's hard, but you shouldn't see your differences as a negative thing. Being a normal vampire absolutely sucks." I laughed.

"Nice pun."

Lorne paused for a moment to laugh. "That wasn't intentional. Anyway, I would give anything to be able to sleep again. That was probably one of the more enjoyable things about being human."

"Eating too. I really miss food."

"See, that's something we both have in common. You really aren't that much different from a normal vampire anyway. When it comes down to it, you have two gifts and can sleep. Everything else is basically the same. Being different isn't a bad thing Evie, I promise that you'll see that someday."

"Maybe I'm not that different from a normal vampire, but everyone always forgets I had these gifts since I was human."

"You are a vampire _now_ , so focus on the present." He said that as if it were easy. "Now, what song are we singing tonight?"

"What? You're in the mood for a duet? Won't that skew the vision or something?"

"Just trying to change the subject, but you are right in a sense. I think if I sing I end up canceling the vision all together. Better pick something quick though, before you turn into an icicle."

"Yet another difference..."

"Evie..."

"Okay, okay. Give me a second to think." I sat in silence trying to think of a song to sing. Then I thought of the perfect song.

 _A, B, C, D, E, F..._

"You are not singing the ABC's to me..."

"But I didn't even get to my favorite part!"

"Oh really, and what might that be?"

"ELEMENO-P." Lorne rolled his eyes and chuckled.

"You could have picked any song...ANY SONG, and you pick the ABC's." I shrugged.

"I'll pick a different one then."

"Something that doesn't make me relive my childhood would be nice." He teased, running a hand through his hair. I then began sing.

 _And I'd give up forever to touch you_  
 _'Cause I know that you feel me somehow_  
 _You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be_  
 _And I don't want to go home right now_  
 _And all I can taste is this moment_  
 _And all I can breathe is your life_  
 _And sooner or later it's over_  
 _I just don't wanna miss you tonight_  
 _And I don't want the world to see me_  
 _'Cause I don't think that they'd understand_  
 _When everything's meant to be broken_  
 _I just want you to know who I am_

I waited a moment until I heard Lorne's faint gasp, meaning his vision had started. The visions don't usually last more than maybe thirty seconds, but this one seemed to last two minutes. It's not like this hasn't happened before but he ends up seeing a lot of information very quickly, so he is unable to retain all of it.

I can relate though. The vision I had the night we found Alec wasn't a regular vision. The ones I usually have are more like frequent flashes of images and my brain is left to piece it together. Sometimes I feel like I can't remember anything and I only remember the main point of it. I haven't seen anything majorly important though. I'm hoping I never have to.

"Well that was interesting..." Lorne trailed off.

"What? What did you see?" He gave me a small smile.

"I don't want to ruin anything..."

"What in my life would be worth you seeing so you would be tempted to ruin it?"

"Just know that we'll all be really happy for you."

"Come on! Please give me something." He laughed.

"I don't know..."

"Is it at least good?"

"Yeah, it doesn't have much to do with anything we actually needed answers for."

"Well that's terrific."

"It really is though! You'll just have to wait a little bit before you'll know what I'm talking about." Lorne sighed happily, not picking up on the sarcasm in my previous statement.

"Is that all I get?"

"Hmmm, I'll think about it."

"Fine. Next topic on the agenda, date night with Ed."

"He's not going to go for it tonight. I'm telling you, there's too much going on."

"Which is exactly why you guys should go! Take a break before it gets any worse. Besides, when was the last time you two went out?"

"It was a while ago. It would be nice to go out just the two of us again. Last time, we were walking by the pond downtown and I ended up tripping over my own feet I guess. I ended up reaching for Ed to steady my myself but the next thing I knew, we were both in the water. Then we...uh...swam...there for a bit."

"Aw, that's cute." I told him, disregarding the last part of his story to make him think I believed that whole "we just swam" thing. Truthfully, Jonah and I found a bag of wet clothes in Ed's car a day or two after that. Needless to say, we knew what we needed to know about what actually happened that night.

"Okay wait, so what do I do? Do I send him a text, do I call him? Usually when we go out we plan it first. He's very organized like that."

Thank God Lorne finally agreed to it. I didn't want him to feel forced to do anything, but it has been so long since Ed and Lorne were able to get a peaceful moment alone together. Lorne never wants to leave because he's afraid that one of us "kids" as he calls us, will need him for something. Ed goes along with whatever Lorne says about it usually. It's a relief that they take this "parenting" thing so seriously but they need to take some time off. I think the five of us can handle Alec for a night anyway. Who knows how crazy everything will get now; they may not get another opportunity like this soon.

"Calling him would probably be better than texting him." I said, rethinking my original idea. Ed barely knows how to text.

"That way he'll definitely see it." Lorne took his cell phone out of his pocket. "Here goes nothing." He went to speed dial and selected Ed's number. With the phone to his ear, he began to panic. "Oh shit!" He hung up the phone.

"What?"

"What am I saying?"

"Just ask him if he wants to go out tonight?"

"What if he asks where?"

"Ask him to guess, then take him to where he first guesses if possible. If not, go through that until you find a place you can go to."

That's what my father used to do with my mother. He would put Jonah and I on his lap and say "we're going to make your mother really happy tonight" as he would dial her number into the home phone and put it on speaker. She would be at work, probably putting data about her patients into a computer (she worked as a physical therapist assistant) and when she picked up, she sounded so tired. My father would tell her to guess where they were going tonight, then he took us all to the first reasonable place she guessed. He would then take us to this little flower shop right by the rehab center so he could buy two bouquets of flowers for her; one for both Jonah and I to give to her.

"Hey that's a good idea! Good thinking!" Lorne patted me on the back, breaking me out of my memory.

It was sad really; how much I silently reminisced. To be quite frank, I did that too often for my own good. I live in the past so often that it makes the present almost unbearable. I hopped off the hood and watched as the dirt floated up around my ankles. It was like a dusty fog fading away, so easily and so fast.

It reminded me of Alec somehow. I wondered if his memory floated away so easily and if it was actually gone. What would happen if he started to remember his past? Would he change? What was he like before we found him? All these questions swirled through my thoughts on the car ride home.

As I entered the house, Ed moved past me giddily. It was an odd sight to see him so excited about something. He ended up saying yes to Lorne's date night proposal...in fact he was thinking the exact same thing (Curtesy of Caleb bugging him about it earlier), leaving the six of us home alone for a few hours. I was almost terrified to see what Caleb had planned for this "initiation ritual" thing he talked about earlier.

"Who's ready to party?!" He asked, ushering me into the living room.

"We're throwing a party...just for the six of us?"

"Hell yeah! Best initiation ritual party ever!" Connor added.

"You guys didn't say anything about an initiation ritual..." Hunter sighed. "As long as we clean everything up before they get back it should be fine, but nothing...and I mean NOTHING, about this can be dangerous. Got it?"

"Yeah Big Daddy Hunter, sure thing." Caleb patted Hunter on the back and walked over to Alec.

"I cannot believe I have to pretend to be related to him sometimes." I laughed.

"You aren't the only one."

"They are so freaking weird." Hunter itched the side of his nose as the two of us watched the twins nearly hit Alec in the face with all their pantomiming nonsense. I guess they were trying to act out what was going to happen, but they did a really shitty job.

"Yup." He shot me a glance and then nodded over to Alec.

"We should probably go help him shouldn't we?" We both shared a sigh as we walked over to them.

"And then you'll jump in the pool..." Connor finished. Alec raised an eyebrow at the two of them.

"Is this what everyone has to do to live here?"

"What do we have to do to live here?" Jonah asked as he walked in from the kitchen and went over to the stereo. He pressed a few buttons and before we knew it, music played outside in the backyard. There was a heated in ground pool back there, which Hunter figured out how to heat so we could still use it into the autumn time.

"We have to make a dramatic speech before jumping in. Simple as that."

"Okay I'm going to tell you right now...none of us did that." I told Alec. He looked at me wide eyed with a smile on his face. There's that smile again.

"Damn, you skipped out on this sacred ritual? Evie..." He tisked three times before sighing.

"Technically we all skipped out on it." Jonah elbowed me in the ribs lightly. "I'm thinking we should have a mass initiation ritual for all of us."

"Ooooh la la...J-onah I like the way you think!" Caleb leaned over and high fived him over my head.

"Should we go get changed then?" Hunter asked. I could tell he was starting to get into this idea.

"I am going to freeze to death. Can't I just watch?" I mumbled.

"I'll turn the heat all the way up. It will be like a hot tub, I promise."

"You can't get out of this Everleigh." Connor winked at me.

"Everleigh...Everleigh..." Caleb began chanting.

"Don't do this..." I warned.

"Everleigh...Everleigh..." Connor and Jonah joined in. "Everleigh...Everleigh...Everleigh..." Hunter and even Alec were chanting with them. With each time they said my name, it seemed to get louder and louder. Every syllable was a stab in the gut until I caved.

"Alright, alright...fine I'll do it. If I get sick it's on you." They all cheered.

Once we had all gotten changed into bathing suits (because we couldn't just do it in the clothes we were already wearing according to Connor) and Hunter had the water heated up, we moved outside. We walked barefoot on the cold, lush grass uphill to the patio. We placed our towels on the cold metal fence as Hunter swung open the gate. Once we were all in, I realized how brisk it actually was. I wore a navy blue bikini which was really idiotic thinking back on it, but at the time it seemed logical. It was modest for a bikini at the very least. I felt the breeze dance against my skin as Caleb's voice roared.

"This is no laughing matter! What we are about to do is SERIOUS people! Once we do this...there is no going back..."

"GET ON WITH IT!" Hunter yelled jokingly at him.

"GET YOUR OWN RITUAL HUNTER!" He yelled back. "Anyways, newbies first. We are going by age in vampire!"

"What does that even mean? Is that code for something?" Alec asked me. He wore a pair of Connor's swim trunks since Lorne didn't think that buying swim trunks would be necessary at this time of year. They were simple, just plain black, but he looked good in black. He also looked good shirtless...

"Uh...I think that he means how long we've been vampires for, but he was trying to make it sound fancy but in the end it just sounded dumb."

I had to rip my eyes from him. I don't know what he did in his past life, but he was decently built. His arms were muscular and you could see the faint lines of a six pack on his stomach. Everyone at this point will make a Greek god comparison when describing male vampires and all their muscles and shit. I'm saving that one for a later date when it's appropriate to think of such things. Besides, he wasn't super duper built, just enough. For now, that's all I'll say. Stupid pretty vampire people...why did that even have to be a thing? Well, I mean obviously it draws in prey but for one we don't drain people, and two, it also flusters the strange vampire girl. Immortality isn't fair.

"That puts me first then since I have no clue, huh?" I nodded. "Well, Evie...if I don't survive this..."

"You will...you have to." I said, playing along with his dramatics. A teasing smile spread across my lips. "What am I to do without you here?" I put a hand to my forehead and leaned back.

"Alec! You're up!" Caleb shouted, gesturing to the diving board.

"I bid you adieu fair maiden." He bowed in a gentleman like manner and walked over to where Caleb was standing. I'm sensing nerdy vibes from him...nice. "Now what do I say again?" Caleb leaned over and whispered it in his ear. Alec nodded, walking to the edge of the diving board.

"Alecsander, are you prepared to join the cult of-"

"Hold up..." Jonah interrupted. "No one said anything about joining a cult."

"When does this cult membership expire?" Connor joked.

"Oh my goodness, just go with it."

"Do I have to sign a contract?" I asked. Alec caught my gaze and chuckled.

"This baptism is your contract. This is also where you die if you break it!"

"I don't think that's the proper use of the word baptism but cool."

"Moving on! Alecsander, are you prepared to join the cult of the infamous Morgynstein Coven?"

"Aye aye captain?" Alec looked back at Caleb who gave him a quick thumbs up. I couldn't help but laugh. I used Hunter's shoulder to stable myself.

"I can't hear you!"

"AYE AYE CAPTAIN!" Alec yelled.

"May this journey cleanse your soul and make you worthy!" Caleb bashed a metal rod against the fence as Alec jumped into the pool water, the sound reverberating in our ears. He swam back up to the surface slowly. Connor began clapping and soon we all joined in. Alec swam to the shallow end of the pool and sat himself down on the edge of the stairs.

"Well Jonah looks like you're next!" I punched his arm lightly.

"I hate this whole vampire age thing." He smirked. Jonah ran up in a gray blur to Caleb and stepped on the diving board. "And I'm NOT saying aye aye captain!"

"If you don't we start over until you do." Caleb informed him.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Nope! J-onah are you prepared to join the cult of the infamous Morgynstein Coven?"

"Who's J-onah?"

"Huh?"

"Who's J-onah?" The dark haired male repeated, crossing his arms.

"You?"

"Nope, my name is Jonah. Ready Caleb, we'll say it together!" His big smile grew larger as he waved his arms through the air as he spoke. That earned a couple chuckles from the rest of us; even more when a low growl erupted from Caleb.

"You're lucky I don't call you something else." Jonah rolled his eyes and laughed off Caleb's response. "Jonah are you prepared to join the infamous cult of the Morgynstein coven?"

"Aye Aye Captain!" He turned around on the diving board and saluted him sarcastically.

"May this journey cleanse your soul and make you worthy..." Jonah spread his arms out and let himself fall back into the water. He didn't come back up right away. I could tell he wanted to mess with Caleb a bit.

"Guess he wasn't worthy." Connor shrugged. "I always knew he had gotten himself deep into the wrong crowd. I just figured he would have more time."

"Aw such touching words before I'm even dead." Jonah said after he had emerged from the water. He swam over and took a seat next to Alec. The two fist bumped and looked over to me. "Your turn!"

"I cannot believe we have to do this."

"It's not so bad." Alec told me.

"Yeah, the water is so warm, it feels like I'm swimming in soup." Jonah added. "Now go Everleigh."

I trudged up to Caleb, my feet slapping on the concrete with every step. I didn't like the feeling of the stares on my back as I moved. Caleb bashed the metal rod on the fence.

"I forgot about that before...oops." He shrugged and smirked. "You think he liked it?" I raised an eyebrow. "Alec." He clarified.

"Oh um...yeah looks like it."

"Good. There's always room for more brethren in this house."

"There wasn't enough of you already?"

"Hey once you do the ritual you are a brethren too."

"That doesn't really make too much sense. I think I would be a _brother_ seeing as I'm not multiple people. It's not like I have spilt personality disorder."

"Hey! Quit the chit chat! I need another sacrifice here!" Connor exclaimed.

"So are you volunteering yourself?" Jonah asked him. Connor pushed him off the steps but Jonah grabbed his arm, pulling Connor in on top of him.

"Dude what the hell man?!" The two laughed and began splashing each other.

"Alright whatever let's do this Evie."

Caleb picked me up and placed me on the diving board, ushering me towards the edge. Standing there I did feel like some sort of sacrifice, like I was being pushed into a volcano. Very explosive, very deadly. I don't know why I felt this much pressure, this was just some stupid game cultivated by Caleb and Connor to get a good laugh. I think it was because we were sort of making a commitment to each other; that we would always be there for each other no matter what. The thought of that calmed me a bit.

"Everleigh, are you prepared to join the cult of the infamous Morgynstein Coven?"

"Aye, aye, captain."

"I can't hear..." God I couldn't take him anymore. I walked off the diving board and stood right in his face, hoping my menacing glare would get him to chill. It worked; he cowardly walked backwards with wide eyes. "Just kidding, please don't kill me." I laughed evilly to myself, even though I knew everyone could hear it, and moved to the edge of the diving board once more.

"May this journey cleanse your soul and make you worthy."

I jumped inhumanly high and felt the butterflies flutter in my stomach as I fell...closer and closer to the warm water. Inhaling a deep breath, I felt the water break against my skin and under I went, falling slowly. I fell until I felt my toes hit the rough bottom of the pool and pushed myself to the surface. The blue tinted world around me was a blur of blue-green colored tiles. I could taste the chlorine around my lips once my body broke through to the surface.

"I give that dive a ten!" Hunter clapped, encouraging the other boys to do the same. Caleb whistled.

"Boy, we've got a show tonight!"

"Really? I'd only give that performance a two..." Jonah trailed off. I knew he was teasing, but I flipped him off anyways. He acted like he was shocked but then did the same back. As much as I love Jonah and all his badass emo glory, he was a little asshole sometimes.

"You made such a huge splash!" Alec exclaimed as I swam over to where the other new "cult members" were.

"Thanks." I said quietly and moved to sit next to him. I sat on the next to last step, not wanting to move too far out of the water.

The next three sacrifices went by pretty fast once we figured out who was going to take over for Caleb's turn. Connor snuck up behind him and pushed him in as Hunter recited the oath. By the time we were all admitted into the cult, I was able to see that Alec was actually enjoying this. Good for him. He should be able to get one night of peace after the last few days. Hopefully he can settle into the new life easily and I'm glad we would all be there to help him. I have a feeling he is going to need it...


	7. Chapter 7: Dead Time Stories

Well here we are...one month since our first encounter with Alec. He's adjusted to our life style well for the most part; he'll drink a blood bag in the morning, go to school with Jonah and I for the day, do homework with me, then we all hang out. I'll go to dance class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so after I leave he'll just hang out with the boys until I come back.

Speaking of dance, Lorne managed to get an appointment at the end of the upcoming month with Pauley Sutherdale to discuss my future in entertainment. He thinks that if we establish a sense of trust with Pauley, then if we (a.k.a. If I) were to ask about the incident that happened to him, he may open up a bit more. Personally, I don't think that we need me to be involved and that we should just ask him about it but Lorne seems to think this was the way to go, so I'll trust what he's thinking. Who knows what he could have seen?

Alec is in no rush to discover his memories. After Ed had asked him about the "Prince of Traitors" message written in blood in the coffin that we found him in, Alec said he wasn't interested in finding out what he did to deserve that title. He brushes things like that off like it isn't a big deal, but I can tell it bugs him.

He and I have an interesting friendship...I guess you could call it that at least. I find myself talking to him more than I talk to my few friends I've known for years. I don't know what about him makes me so talkative; I tend to ramble on and on about anything. Alec doesn't seem to mind my ramblings. He's very talkative himself; possibly to the same extent as Lorne.

He's in all of my classes in school, and let me tell you, I don't think he can shut up. The teachers are still helping students recover from the aftermath of the car accident so they don't yell at him much for it. Honestly it's nice having a friend who always wants to talk to you. It's not that people don't talk to me, it's just that I don't talk much and people want someone to respond to them with more enthusiasm than I am capable of putting out. I guess that's why our relationship works; Alec's good at talking and I'm good at listening.

All the girls go crazy over him. I get it I guess. He's a really sweet person and humor just comes easy to him. That and he's _very_ attractive. Josie and McKayla tell me all the time how grateful they are that I attracted such a "hottie" to our group. I roll my eyes and tell them that I didn't attract him, he just lives in my house is all so it makes sense that we have to get along.

Grace and Robert seem to like him too. Robert even took it upon himself to invite him to the get together he's having after homecoming. Grace roped me into going by telling me that she would come over to do my hair and makeup beforehand and we can "bond over girly shit" which was something I couldn't say no to. She looked so pitiful when I told her I didn't want to go and I couldn't take it anymore, so I agreed.

With homecoming being at the end of this week, being drowned in homework, and trying to balance school and dance, I almost feel like a normal teen. So far we haven't gained any information on the weapons we found, so shockingly enough things have been relatively quiet. Except for at the moment as a heated debate between my brothers continues...

"Can't we all just agree that Heath Ledger is the better Joker?" Connor asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No! Jack Nicholson! Jack Nicholson people!"

"Shut up Hunter!" Hunter laughed at Caleb's remark.

"Well I'm not the one who's over here fan-girling over Jared Leto's Joker either."

"I wasn't fan girling! I was just saying how his was a very different approach to the role and I respect that." Caleb retorted.

"Jonah who's right?" Connor asked. Jonah pointed at me.

"She's the Batman expert not me."

"Please don't drag me into this..."

"He's right Evie." Alec said with a wink. I rolled my eyes.

"Who's side are you on here?"

"Hey I'm just trying to give you the credit you deserve."

"I think you're feeding me to the sharks." He laughed.

"Evie you have to settle this." Caleb told me. "Tell them who's boss."

"Everleigh...remember that one time I could have said that mean comment to you but didn't?" Connor asked me.

"Nope." I responded with a smile. "I like how you tried to make it vague to get me to remember some random time in the past though."

"Oh no. Poor Connor...his plan was foiled." Hunter traced a finger down his slightly tanned face, as if drawing a tear drop. Connor flipped him off.

"Ha ha asshole."

"Ha ha."

"Ha ha yourself Hunter, Evie isn't even close to picking Nicholson, that much I know." Caleb told him. Just then the front door opened to reveal Ed and Lorne who were just getting home from a late night at the bar.

"Hey kiddos." Ed smiled as he placed his coat on the rack. He took Lorne's and did the same causing Lorne to look at him all lovey dovey like for a moment.

"We need you guys to settle an argument." Jonah told the two.

"Oh boy...Ed do you want to take this one?" Lorne shrunk behind the other male. Ed chuckled.

"Alright fine. What's the argument about this time?"

"Which Joker is better?"

"Oh, Nicholson for sure."

"Thank you!" Hunter explained.

"But Heath Ledger!" Connor exclaimed.

"Come on, what about Leto?" Caleb shouted at the same time.

"Why didn't you guys just ask Evie?" Lorne asked. "She's the Batman expert."

"See, told you that you needed that credit." Alec whispered to me. I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing.

"She never gave her answer." Connor told him. "So Evie...who will it be?"

"I don't know, I feel like they all played the role so differently that you can't judge them. They were all good, but different, you know?"

"Okay but if you had to pick!" Caleb whined.

"You know what, fine. I'll pick Cameron Monaghan from _Gotham._ "

"What the hell? He's not even technically the Joker! They never called him that!" Connor exclaimed. He and I watch the show together, and he gets really annoyed by that.

"He's the Joker like character on the show so that's all I need to know. He doesn't need the name, just the personality."

"Okay I'm done now. Evie you disappoint me. We were talking movies." Hunter said exasperatingly.

"Sorry. I just like them all. I wanted to be different."

"You don't have to try hard." Jonah teased.

"Don't let them bug you Evie, different is special." Alec told me.

"Alec don't lie to her." Caleb teased. Alec pulled me behind him.

"You wanna go outside?"

"Yeah let's go!" The two of them banged on their chests. I groaned as Lorne went over and stood between them.

"Um no, it's snowing out and I don't want to clean up body parts all night in front of our neighbors."

"Aw come on Lorne, can't you let me beat the crap out of him just once?" Alec joked with a smile.

"Lorne you can be the hot guy who holds up the cards that have the round numbers on them."

Caleb doubled over at his own dumb joke. You could tell Lorne was disappointed but I couldn't tell if it was with himself for getting involved, the comment itself, or if he was just regretting starting this coven with Ed (I'm kidding about that one...sort of). The world may never know.

"If only you were younger so I could put you in the corner..."

Lorne walked back over to Ed who tried to suppress his laughter as he wrapped Lorne in his arms. They were honestly so cute together. It was so perfect. I hope someday I can find a love like they have.

After everyone settled down for a little bit, people began disappearing for the night. Lorne and Ed retired to their room, the same went for Caleb and Jonah a little while later. Hunter and Connor went out somewhere, so it was just Alec and I hanging out in the living room.

"Hey Evie?" Alec asked me. I hummed in response. "How did you all find each other?"

"What do you mean?" I sat myself up so I could see him properly. He sat on his spot on the couch. It was crazy to think about a month ago he sat there covered in dried blood and dirt.

"Well I remember Lorne told me that he and Ed just gathered you all up as time went on, but like how? I never realized that you all weren't actually related; except for you and Jonah and then Connor and Caleb."

"Well we all have our own stories about how we were turned. Hunter was the only one of us who was turned by Ed. Connor and Caleb were turned by one sire and then Jonah and I were turned by another."

"Why did they turn Hunter?" I sighed.

"Well you see, Hunter was driving home from college, and he got into a really bad car accident. From what he told me, he says he saw this man standing in the middle of the road. The highway was apparently backed up with traffic, so he was taking a back road. He slammed on the brakes and before he could even blink, the man was gone and he was laying in a ditch somewhere in the woods. The car somehow flipped over and flung him out before catching on fire and destroying any evidence that he was there. Hunter was really badly injured at that point.

"Ed was just starting out in his work for the government so he was sent out to do some investigating on his own before the cops and other accident responders got there. Ed smelt all the blood Hunter was loosing and turned him before he could die. He and Lorne then did everything they could to make sure that Hunter was safe and comfortable after that."

"They would just take in someone they didn't know like that?" Alec questioned. I nodded.

"If you don't recall, that's what they did with you." He shrunk down into the couch. "It's okay, they did it with the rest of us too."

"What about Connor and Caleb?"

"They were turned by a rogue vampire trying to make a newborn vampire army so she could avenge her dead lover or something like that. Before the fight began, they snuck out. None of us really knows what happened to the army after that. I don't blame them for leaving, it's stupid for someone to come take them away from their home and be like "you get to fight and die for me because someone killed my lover." I mean, I don't know..."

"I kind of get where that lady was coming from. If someone ripped someone I cared about that deeply away from me, I would be angry too. Even still, an army seems a little drastic."

"Just a little?"

"Just a little?" He mocked. I stuck my tongue out at him. "Maybe it's really drastic but anyways, on with the story."

He smiled like a little child being told a bedtime story. I don't see why he doesn't just ask everyone else their personal stories. I guess just getting them all at once is easier.

"Connor and Caleb travelled all over the country for a few years, and eventually they ran into Hunter who convinced Lorne and Ed to take them in as well."

"So how do you and Jonah play into all this?" I stayed silent for a moment trying to figure out how to word a response. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. Lorne said it wasn't a good experience for the two of you and..."

"It's okay..." I interjected. "I just need to find a way to word it for you. He's right, it wasn't a good experience. None of us really had good experiences in the vampire department before we came here."

"Are you sure? I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"Yeah." Alec scooted away from his spot and moved closer to me.

"I was...different, even as a human. The gifts that I have transferred over from my human life into my vampire life. They first manifested when I was twelve. I've spent time in a few mental hospitals growing up..."

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why would they put you in a mental hospital?"

"My parents didn't know what was going on with me. Neither did I to be honest. When your twelve year old daughter can control people by singing and can see into the future, it can be hard to deal with. Humans don't understand that kind of stuff."

"Humans are afraid of the things in life that they can't understand...they do terrible..." Alec cut himself off.

"Are you okay?" He blinked a few times and then looked back at me.

"Yes I'm fine, I apologize. I don't have the slightest idea about that. Please continue." I just stared at him for a few minutes. "Really, I'm alright."

"Were you remembering something?" I questioned. He just shrugged and smiled.

"I seriously hope not. Anyways..." I decided to continue my story since I was sensing that he didn't want to tell me about what had happened. That's fine. His memories are his business.

"Let's see...where was I going with that...oh right. So I spent some time in a few mental hospitals here and there. That was mainly because of my visions though. They didn't technically know about the singing stuff because my father had no way of explaining that to the doctors. I wasn't myself anymore at that point. I was angry at my parents for putting me into those places.

"They were just trying to do what was best for me, but if I would have just stayed with them instead of going to those places maybe...I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Basically the routine for the next four years was that I would have a really terrible vision which would force me into hysterics, my parents would find me huddled in my room with random words written down on the walls; sometimes written in blood, sometimes not. Then, I would be admitted into a mental hospital for a month and because there wasn't nothing mentally wrong with me during that month, I got sent home.

"I was in a mental hospital for my sixteenth birthday. I don't remember any of the names of the hospitals I went to by the way; those faded with a lot of my human memories, but anyways, I wanted to go see Jonah for our birthdays so I broke out. Honestly security sucked at that place so it wasn't hard, but I'll saving you the boring details of it.

"So I was out and about trying to find my way home to see Jonah and all of a sudden I find myself in this alleyway and I'm being pinned up to the wall by this weird man with red eyes. I later learned his name was Enzo McClain. He had chosen me to be his next meal. Now obviously that didn't go as planned seeing as I am still alive and sitting before you now, but killing me was the goal. He didn't finish draining the life out of me so the venom took its course. I had passed out from all the blood loss and remained unconscious throughout the entire change but I still felt the pain of it.

"I'm surprised Enzo didn't didn't dispose of my body. Well, I guess you could say he tried considering my body was left under trash bags next to an over filled dumpster. I don't know how I ended up finding Enzo again, but I somehow stumbled around the city until I found him. He was less than pleased but told me that now I was his responsibility so I had to stay with him. Our lifestyle for the first little bit...was different than the lifestyle here. He and I would find humans in the surrounding cities to feed off of and then dispose of the bodies. Like, actually dispose of them though, not the half ass job he did with me. The guilt of that still eats me alive.

"Here's where Jonah starts to come in. Enzo couldn't be bothered to even try to take care of me in the slightest, so he took it upon himself to find my parents; who believed I was dead, to see if I could go back to them once I had myself more under control. I was technically "missing" but I think my parents gave up hope too soon. I don't know why I agreed that his plan was a good idea, because honestly it's so stupid. Humans shouldn't know about the existence of supernatural beings. Enzo wasn't a very pleasant person to be around so I guess that's why. When he went to approach my parents one night, he witnessed them get shot and killed. Jonah was with them...I guess whoever killed them didn't want any witnesses, so he shot Jonah too.

"The only nice thing that man has done for me was turning Jonah. I know that sounds selfish of me, given that living life as a vampire isn't always the best situation to be in, but it's true. I don't think I could have gotten through anything if it wasn't for that. We stayed with Enzo for a little while but unfortunately...or fortunately, I guess it depends on how you look at it...our gifts were too much for Enzo to attempt to teach us to handle. He wasn't gifted himself so he didn't understand any of it anyways.

"With that being said, he caught wind of a coven nearby and asked if they could help. Lorne and Ed didn't realize that we were being shipped off to live with them when they made the deal with Enzo, but they were kind enough to take us in anyway and we've been here ever since."

"Is Enzo still around?"

"Who knows? I certainly don't care."

"But he's your sire..."

"So? He doesn't give a damn about Jonah and I..."

"Then why would he send you here to get the two of you the assistance you need?"

"Because two newborns were too much work for him. I was just a mistake and Jonah was only turned because Enzo thought it was best that I have someone else who can deal with me. He didn't care...he was so selfish...all he could do is tell me how hopeless I was and how I was an accident; a mistake that was never meant to be made! I should have never...I should have..."

"Evie..."

"I shouldn't have been turned. I should be dead. I'm just a freak...can't blend in...can't be normal...I...I...no..."

"Everleigh." Alec said my name sternly.

As much as I hate it that it sounded like he was scolding me like a child, the sound of my name crossing over his lips was something that I almost liked hearing. It was at that point I realized I was standing in front of Alec hyperventilating with bloody tears rolling down my cheeks. My hands were shaking and I couldn't seem to get enough air into my lungs. I didn't technically need to breathe; one of the normal things about me, but I still couldn't stop gasping for air.

"Hey...I'm sorry I shouldn't have asked." He spoke softly. A look of pain flashed across his face as he placed his hands on my shoulders. "I didn't mean to upset you. Please don't be angry with me."

"I'm...I'm not...angry...with you." I felt so embarrassed. Alec doesn't need to see me get all worked up about stupid things like this. It doesn't even matter anyway. I can't change the past. What happened has occurred and it's over.

"You aren't a mistake."

"What do you know?" I asked, backing away from him.

I turned around and wiped my eyes with the bottom of my sleeves. The white colored sweater now looked like it would belong in a horror movie. I hated how my tears had to be so thick because of the blood, so it looks like I was murdered whenever I cried.

"Well I know that if it wasn't for you I probably would still be in that coffin."

"Anyone could have found you..."

"But you're the only one who heard me..."

"Well I..." I felt his fingertips slowly caress the top of my hand. He fit his hand into mine.

"Please don't argue..." Alec pulled me in the direction of the couch. "I would like to believe it was fate that we were to meet..." I've never seen Alec this serious other than right after we first brought him here.

"What do you mean?"

"I've been pondering this for a while now..."

"Oh, you've been pondering?"

"Yeah."

"Ha, pondering...that's a funny word...you can be so British sometimes."

"Out of all the times you could have chosen to mock me, you chose this moment?" I laughed through the tears very briefly.

"Sorry."

"It's alright. I'm just teasing you. But Everleigh..." Alec pulled at our intertwined hands to pull me closer to him. He leaned down so his lips were right by my ear.

"Alec..." I mumbled. "What are you..."

"You were not a mistake. You simply just survived someone else's idiocy." His voice was quiet even though he was so close. He spoke in a tone laced with such sincerity that I couldn't help but melt.

He pulled back slightly and moved in again. When his lips slowly connected with my cheek, I froze. I just couldn't believe it. What...Why... What did this man want with my blood soaked face? He's probably just doing it to try to make me feel better...I appreciate it I guess. When he stood up straight to face me, he looked nervous as all hell.

"Never forget that."

"You should be a motivational speaker..." His sweet laughter hung around me even after he stopped.

"I'm just telling the truth." I shrugged. "I am."

"Fine." Alec shook his head and smiled.

"What am I going to have to do to get you to believe me?" I shrugged again. He sighed.

All of a sudden; at top vamp speed, Alec had wrapped his arms around me and flopped backwards onto the couch. I squealed from the sudden movement and tried to squirm away out of instinct, but he didn't budge.

"What the hell was that?!" I exclaimed.

"I'm hugging you."

"You're hugging me?"

"That's what I appear to be doing, no?"

"What is your definition of a hug?"

"What is with you and the questions again?"

"Me with the questions? I believe that's you! You always start it."

"But you started it this time..." Alec had a point. I huffed as a smile formed on his face. "Does the mean I win?"

At that point I had enough of his snarky attitude. Did he win?! Nope! I moved quickly before he could protest and pinned his arms above his head. It may have been very uncharacteristic of me to do so, but the look of surprise that fell on his face was enough to allow me to push the embarrassment away for a moment.

"Damn..." He breathed. I couldn't help but smirk at his reaction. "You're really cute when you're terrifying like this..."

"What?" My hands flung off where I was holding his arms down. His hands flew over his mouth.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to say that..." His voice was muffled by his hands. He would be blushing if he could.

"Why are you getting so flustered now? You're the one who kissed my cheek over there..." I jabbed my thumb back at where we were standing a few moments ago.

"Well..."

"Well?" I deepened my voice to mock his.

"It felt like it was the right thing to...to do I guess...I don't...you were upset and...I thought..." I couldn't handle his stuttering anymore. The poor guy was having a difficult time.

"I was just teasing you." I sat up and realized that I was straddling his lap. Well this was kind of awkward. "Sorry...I..I'll get up now..."

"No." He protested. "Well I mean you don't have to..." His eyes averted mine and moved to the floor. "I don't mind it if you don't."

Oh geez! Come on dude why do you have to make this my decision! I mean we've known each other for like a month which feels like a long time but it's really not...though I do admit, when a guy as kind as Alec shows this much interest in a girl, it's really hard to say no.

"I guess that's okay." He smiled and pulled me back down to lay on his chest.

For a while everything just seemed perfect. Alec and I just laid on that couch holding each other for the longest time. Once he started running his fingers through my hair, I began to get tired and ended up falling asleep.


	8. Chapter 8: New Kid on the Block

The next morning arrived faster than I would have liked. When I woke up, the strange events from last night flooded my brain. I couldn't tell you why even if I tried, but I felt safe with Alec. Being wrapped in his arms, I realized that I haven't felt this way in a long time.

It was really strange that he has this kind of effect on me after just a month of knowing each other. Was he right? Did...whatever you would like to call this have something to do with the fact that I could somehow hear Alec on the night that we found him? Was it some sort of fate? At this point I'm not sure I want to know.

To be honest, it scared me. If fate brought us together, what did it have in store for us? Especially with the whole weapon debacle still in the process of being sorted out. I don't know how much of this I am able to handle at the moment.

Speaking of things I need to handle, I forgot to mention something that happened the night of the vigil. It's important for later on in this tale of woe. The man that I have had reoccurring visions of in the past was the one who I saw walking towards us. That was what prompted me to move in the direction of Alec. My brain got so muddled by the odd vision that I forgot about that detail until a few days later. I never see the man's face in the vision, however, if you were to place me in the same room as him, I could tell you he was the same man based on the terrifying presence he gives off.

I had never seen him in person until that night. His appearance alone scares me, with his long, blonde locks and vicious cat like eyes. Even though that's all I've seen of his face, it still gives me the creeps. My guess is that he is a demon of some sort. Although when he moves, he does so in a very vampire like manner; with grace flowing through every step. Most demons move in very animalistic ways, according to what I have heard from Ed.

This man...whoever he may be, will probably end up being involved in this mess somehow. I could only hope that when we inevitably meet this person, that he is on our side of things and isn't an enemy, although any logic left in my brain told me that the scenario I'm wishing for will not be the case. For now, I will remain hopeful.

Alec shifted on the couch, disrupting my thoughts. I'm surprised that it was his movement that did so rather than his light snoring. It was nice to have someone who was like myself in a physical sense, even though the snoring was partially on the annoying side of things. It was almost cute too. With Alec's newfound ability to sleep, I didn't feel so alone. I didn't dare to open my eyes, fearing that I would have to get up and the sense of security that I felt would quickly fade away. I focused on keeping my breaths even as I heard footsteps entering the room.

"Awe, Ed would you look at that!"

"Lorne dear, if you don't keep your voice down, you will wake them both up."

"Oh please, you know that Alec would sleep through an apocalypse. He is such a heavy sleeper!" Ed chuckled at Lorne's remark quietly.

"That wasn't the point." There was a brief moment of silence. "It looks like she has been crying again."

"The past little bit has been hard on all of us, her especially."

"So he was just comforting her then?" I could feel Ed's eyes on Alec and I as if he were examining a crime scene. I suppose with the blood on my face it looked like one. I should have cleaned up last night...

"Well look at you getting all _protective_."

"They are just getting close awfully fast, that is all."

"If you don't recall, so did we."

"That was different..."

"How?"

"The supernatural world wasn't exploding at the time."

"It isn't exploding now either, just think of it as...maybe slightly on the wrong side of insanity."

"Even so..."

"They can't avoid their attraction to each other Ed. You can't tell me you don't see it."

"I do, which is why I'm worried for them."

"You shouldn't be...just be happy Evie found her mate."

"Now you're just jumping to conclusions based on what you saw in that _one vision_."

"Time will tell I suppose, but if I am right, just remember I told you so."

"We will see, it's only been a month." I heard the two of them kiss for a small moment. I'm surprised I was able to keep up the act for this long. On the inside I was freaking out about everything that was just spoken.

"We should probably wake them up for school then." Not even a second later, I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

"Wakey wakey..." Lorne's voice spoke softly.

"You seriously did not just say that..." I mumbled, opening my eyes to see his face very close to mine. Personal space was not his cup of tea.

"RISE AND SHINE!" It was funny how Lorne would change his tone of voice to wake Alec and I up separately when just the shouting would work just fine. He was right though, Alec was a very heavy sleeper.

"It's morning already?" Alec asked through a yawn. He sat up, forgetting that I was still on top of him. "Oh...um...good morning..."

"Morning..." I gave him a small smile. Then I remembered the blood on my face. "Shit, I'll be back." After mumbling a quick good morning to Ed and Lorne, I practically ran into the downstairs bathroom to wash my face off.

The cold water woke me up just a bit, but it was enough to send me panicking about what Lorne and Ed were talking about. What the hell was a mate? I mean they probably just meant like a buddy or something like that. The intensity behind their words about Alec and I gave me the feeling that it ran deeper than that. I ran through what knowledge I had about Alec and I's connection. Alec thought that somehow it was fate that brought us together. Lorne and Ed thought that I had found my mate, whatever that meant, and I know that this whole situation makes me very confused. Of course I like being friends with him, he is a really nice guy, and he makes me feel truly safe.

With what happened between us last night, I had to say the friends border was being very blurred. It wasn't that I didn't like what happened between us, of course I did. I'm just worried that we are entering a weird point in our friendship we won't be able to get out of. It was really sweet of him to be there for me last night when I snapped a little. It was nice that he understood more about all of us now and that he has been so patient and understanding about it.

I took one last look in the mirror, sighing before shaking off the nervous feeling these thoughts were giving me, and quickly exited the bathroom. Before I knew it, I was ready for school and in Ed's passenger seat, with Alec and Jonah conversing quietly in the back.

"So what do you guys think of the new kid?" Robert had asked us all during lunch. Today was the lunch block where all of our little friend group was present. There was Robert, Grace, Jonah, Josie, McKayla, Alec, and I all sitting at a round table on the outskirts of the cafeteria.

"Why don't you tell us? You seemed to be talking up quite a storm with him." Grace said while shoving half a cookie in her mouth.

"He's kind of cute..." McKayla said, twisting a brunette curl around her finger.

"Oh please..." Jonah rolled his eyes. "You think anyone with half a brain is cute." She scoffed and threw a French Fry at him.

"She's not wrong." Josie told him. "Have you even looked at him?"

Jonah and I simultaneously looked over our shoulders across the cafeteria to find the blonde haired boy sitting alone. He was reading some sort of novel; blowing short locks out of his eyes when they got in the way of the words on the page. Even from his seated position, I could tell he was very tall, but still had a little bit of muscle on him. They were right though, he was attractive. There was just one problem...he wasn't human. I could tell from his scent and his violet colored eyes that he was a vampire. His eyes would be red if it weren't for the contacts. Jonah and I shared a glance with each other. Meanwhile, I could feel Alec's glance on us, meaning that he picked up on this too.

"Do you think we should ask him to come sit over here?" McKayla asked.

"He looks pretty absorbed in that book..." I mumbled.

"Exactly Evie! He should be socializing! Lets go get him!" Grace declared as she grabbed my hand and started to drag me across the room.

"Hey, wait." I protested but she didn't hear me. I could have broken away from her grasp but I would rather not hurt her. Soon enough we were standing in front of the boy. She cleared her throat.

"Hello there stranger!" I mentally slapped my forehead at her words. She could be a bit too much for me at times.

He glanced up from his book slowly. His eyes examined her first before moving to me. His eyes widened at the realization that we were of the same species and he smiled, flashing perfectly straight teeth with long canines that could easily pierce someone's throat.

"Ah, hello to you as well." His voice had a slight accent to it, possibly Italian? I wasn't too sure at the moment.

"So, my name is Grace..." She pulled me out from behind her. "And this shy little ray of sunshine here is Everleigh..."

"Evie." I corrected. Sometimes I just hated being called Everleigh. It made me sound old.

He closed his book and stood up from his seat before shaking both of our hands rather firmly. I felt like mine might have shaken off if I was human but Grace's hand still seemed to be intact. That was good at least.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I'm Kaleb." How lovely, now I have two Caleb's to differentiate between.

"We were just wondering if you would be interested in coming over to sit at our table." She pointed back to the corner where McKayla and Josie were giggling, Jonah was picking at his black nail polish, and Robert was waving with Alec like two middle-aged fathers. If I were him, I probably would have just stayed and read my book.

"Why not?" Kaleb said with an even bigger smile. He followed us to the opposite side of the cafeteria.

When we got back to the table, McKayla and Josie were practically squealing. Jonah seemed on edge while Alec seemed to be on the friendly Rob spectrum. He looked slightly concerned once he saw my reaction though.

"So everyone this is Kaleb!" Grace exclaimed, flipping her blonde and pink hair over her shoulder.

"I'm Robert. You can call be Rob , Robbie..."

"Roberto!" Grace added.

"At this point I'll even answer to jackass." Rob began to laugh at his own dumb joke.

"Real smooth there buddy." Jonah said sarcastically.

"That sour muffin is Jonah. If you can believe it, he and Evie are twins." Grace nudged Kaleb with her elbow. He laughed.

"I can sure see the resemblance..." He looked between Jonah and I, but kept his eyes on Jonah mostly. Strange.

"We've got Josie and McKayla over here." Rob pointed to the pair of them.

"Hi..." They both gushed. It was typically for humans to gush at a vampire's beauty like they were at the moment. They did the same to Jonah and Alec as well.

"And finally, we've got Alec. He's new too. Transferred in about a month ago." Grace finished. Alec gave a short wave.

"Well, it is certainly nice to meet all of you." Kaleb shot a quick glance towards Alec. "You seem familiar...we haven't met before, have we?"

"Not that I can recall." Alec told him with a smile. I had to stifle a laugh with that one...if only they knew.

"That's really peculiar, I could have sworn I've seen you before."

"Strange, huh? I get that a lot." I was thankful Alec was able to play along with this. All I could think about is that something was off. What if he knew Alec in the past? Another vampire coming into the same school only a few miles away from where he was found? It certainly couldn't be a coincidence.

"So where are you from?" McKayla asked him. For once, I was glad that she was boy crazy. It got him off of the seemingly harmless topic we were just on.

"I've lived in Italy for most of my life. When I was younger, my parents travelled a lot so we lived all over Western Europe."

"That's actually super cool!" Grace exclaimed.

"So, I don't know if you've heard, but homecoming is this Friday night. Now, if you are up for some fun, after homecoming I'm having a small after party at my place. Very exclusive. We will all be there, so if you are interested you are more than welcome to come."

"I'm usually not one for parties...but you all seem like genuinely nice people. Why not?!" Geez, for a vampire he was very friendly and outgoing. Especially if he's willing to accept a party invitation from someone he just met.

"Great!" Rob took out a piece of paper from his notebook and scribbled his cell phone number and address on it. I seriously wanted to rip my hair out. This guy could honestly be a serial killer for all that we know! "Here is my number and address, we'll probably just car pool back to my house if you want to get in on that, but just in case you need anything."

"Ha, ha, thanks so much!" Kaleb laughed before taking the paper.

Does he have a mind control gift or something? He's got everyone drooling over him except for Jonah...nope, even Jonah is looking at him kind of intensely. Great, so it's just me here. Just then the bell rang, signaling that we had to go back to class.

"What's your next class?" Josie asked him.

"Uh, hang on..." He pulled his schedule out of his back pocket. "I have English next."

"Yay! Perfect! So do McKayla, Evie, Alec, and I!"

"Do you mind if I follow you there then? I don't quite know my way around this place yet."

"Sure! Just try to stay close though so you don't lose us."

"People will cut you off if you aren't careful." Alec added.

As we made our way down the hall, I managed to get Alec alone behind the other three. I slowed my pace down to give us some distance between them.

"Aren't you the least bit concerned that we have another vampire at our school?" I whispered.

"No, why? Are you?"

"Kind of? He seemed to know you."

"It was just a mistake. I must look like someone he knows."

"But..."

"Evie, it's fine. Don't work yourself up over it."

"But what if he knew you from before you lost your memories?"

"We'll just keep an eye on him, okay?"

"Fine." I muttered. He squeezed my hand for a brief moment in an attempt to reassure me that everything would be alright. I almost wished that he held my hand for a little while longer...

"So let me get this straight..." Ed leaned back against his chair on the front porch. "So there is a new kid at school that's a vampire, and you think that he has some mind control power and is using it on everyone but you?"

"Don't make it sound so impossible!" I huffed. I would rather talk to Lorne about something like this because he wouldn't throw logic at me like a rock, but he was currently working at the bar right now and I needed to tell someone.

"Calm down a little bit. I can't tell you that it isn't possible. Maybe you were just overreacting a little..."

"You've got to be kidding..." I mumbled, sinking deeper into the pillows of the wooden chair.

"We've all been on edge lately, you especially. With everything that has happened it makes sense for you to be. Although,I will admit that it is a little odd that there happens to be another vampire your age at the school. That must mean that there is another vampire coven in the area. Who knows, that could be a good thing. If the witches made those weapons and that man you saw has anything to do with them, then they are no friends of ours. Maybe this vampire and whoever he's here with can give us some much needed assistance."

"Fine, I guess we'll wait it out then. I'm going to go get ready for dance." I shot up out of the chair and stomped upstairs into my room.

Throwing my hair up into a bun roughly I sighed. What the hell is wrong with me? A few months ago, if someone told me that I would be upset as much as I have been in the past few weeks I probably would have shrugged it off and never thought of it again. If someone told me about that now, I was almost sure that I would have a mental breakdown and look over my shoulder at every turn. Maybe I'm becoming paranoid. Regardless of that I had to finish getting ready for dance so after slipping on my tights, leotard, and my ballet skirt, I grabbed a pair of boots and my sweatshirt and headed downstairs.

I went into the living room to stretch and found Jonah and Alec sitting on opposite ends of the couch watching _SpongeBob_. I made sure I was out of their way and began to stretch. I would have time to stretch at the studio, but I liked to stretch beforehand anyways. It gives me something to do.

"Evie, I don't know if it disgusts me or amazes me that you can contort your body like that..." Caleb told me, quickly moving past me to flop himself on the couch between the other two. Right now, I liked this Caleb a lot more than I liked the other one.

"Shhhhh..." Alec pressed a finger to his lips. Caleb stuck his tongue out at him.

"Tell me what is so fascinating about a freaking sea sponge?"

"He lives in a nicely furnished pineapple and somehow has befriended a snail."

"Wow, he lives in a house and has a pet."

"If I get a pet, I could be SpongeBob."

"Dear God, no..." I said as I extended my leg up against the doorframe and made both my legs straight up against it.

"Ouch." Hunter abruptly stopped beside me. "That is not natural..."

"Oh Hunter don't you know...that's how she gets all the guys!" Caleb told him. I brought my leg down off the doorframe.

"And just what guys am I getting?"

"All of them."

"Yeah..." I said sarcastically. "I just have all the boys piling on to me." They all looked at each other.

"Shall we gentlemen?" Jonah asked.

I began to back up to leave. Before I could even leave the room, all of them were on top of me, minus Alec who sat on the couch laughing. The weight of the three of them was practically crushing me.

"Get off."

"Aw but Evie!"

"Off Jonah."

"We just love you sooooooo much!"

"Stop it Caleb. I'm supposed to be your sister!" Just then I felt another weight on top of the pile of man-puppies that were on me.

"Aw group hug!"

"Not you too Connor...ugh." I looked to Alec. "Help?"

"No Alec, don't help her!"

"Shut up Hunter!" Then I had an idea. "ED!" They all shot up off of me. It was pretty amusing.

"Evie, what is it? Why are you on the floor?"

"She just flopped there." Jonah told him.

"Liar." I stood up. "They flopped on top of me . I was calling you to get them off but they stopped."

"Oh boy...please don't break anything. Lorne will kill me if anything gets broken."

"That's it? They could have crushed me to death."

"You got up fine didn't you?"

"That's not the...never mind, it's useless. Can you drop me off at dance now?" I walked to the door and grabbed my dance bag.

"Your taps seem angry..." Nico commented.

"Huh?" I asked, slightly out of breath.

"You usually don't tap as hard into the ground."

I sighed. He and I were running through what we had choreographed of my tap solo. I'm doing all sorts of tricks with an umbrella as I tap dance. I told him all about how I was meeting with Pauley Sutherdale, so Nico wanted to get this routine done so I could show it to Pauley when we meet. It's a difficult routine, but I do like the challenge. Nico was right though, I was angry. Not with the routine or anything, I absolutely loved that, but with everything that's been going on lately.

"I have a lot on my mind I guess." I responded simply. He just smiled and shook his head.

"I've been teaching you for how many years now? You can smile through a dance all you want...but the feet are the windows to the soul."

"I don't think that's how that saying goes."

"For normal people. Dancers or any performers really, aren't exactly normal people. We feel things differently and express emotions in ways a lot of people don't understand." Oh he had no idea how far I strayed from normal!

"I guess."

"You don't have to tell me what you are angry about or anything. I imagine living in a house where you are the only girl gets pretty intense sometimes. I just want you to remember it's alright to not be okay."

I couldn't tell you how he picked up on what exactly was wrong with me whenever I got upset like this. I guess he's figured me out after all these years. Of course he never picked up on the supernatural parts of it, but the basic stuff...Nico just knew. That man was truly a wonder.

"If you need to come in here and dance your angry little heart out, then you do that. Of course when you're on stage, we have to keep this happy, flirty, circus tight rope walker vibe going on. But when we are just practicing, I don't care how you do this routine. I trust that you'll be great on stage, so do what you have to do. Ignore what I've told you and everyone else at this studio about leaving that crap at the door. That doesn't work for you, and I know that because if I don't tell you that, you'll just keep bottling it up until it explodes. I'm the same way, and it sucks, but trust me, my trick works. Which is why..."

Nico ran out the room for a moment, his black curls bouncing behind him as he moved. He brought back in a packet.

"I have this for you."

"Thanks, I've always wanted paper." I laughed.

"Very funny." He came and stood by my side. It was funny because I was so used to guys being so much taller than me. He was actually about a half inch shorter than I was. "You've been getting into choreography recently haven't you?"

"Kind of. Why?"

"Well, a buddy of mine reached out to me a couple days ago and told me he was having a variety show and was looking for some dancers in it. He asked me if I had any dancers that I thought would be good for it, so..." He handed me the packet. "I was thinking that maybe it would be good for you to do some choreography for yourself."

"Seriously?"

"Yup. And I'll even sweeten the deal. I am working with a new student for a solo and the other room is open, so if you want to come in during that time to work on it..."

"Yes. I'll do it!" I hugged him.

"I figured that's what you would say. And you can do whatever you want, although I personally feel like you'd do really good with contemporary, just saying. If you need help cutting music or anything, feel free to give me a call."

"Thank you so much."

"Of course. Now speaking of that new student...I think you'll be very pleased to hear that he's your age and is interested in joining the competition team!"

"I'll have a buddy now." Everyone on my team is a year or two younger than I am, so having someone my age would be cool I guess.

"He's starting today too."

"Hello..." A familiar voice said. Oh no...

"Speak of the devil, huh?" Nico again exited the room. I followed him out.

There Kaleb stood at the front desk. He wore a tight white t-shirt and a black pair of joggers. He definitely looked ready to dance. I can't believe this...at this point all of this crap could not be a coincidence. Everyone who told me that it was can suck my...

"Oh my gosh! Evie!" He screamed. "I didn't know you danced here."

"Hey Kaleb." I smiled politely.

"Wait...you two already know each other?" Nico asked excitedly.

"We met in school today." I told him.

"Yeah, today was my first day! We ended up sitting together at lunch." Kaleb added, shooting me a smile.

"Well that's great then! Why don't you two get your shoes on and then head into the other room to start stretching."

Kaleb and I sat down where all the cubbies and coat hangers were for our stuff and started to change our shoes. I could feel his devilish gaze on me. I looked up and met his eyes. I couldn't detect anything but pure excitement from it, but I couldn't be too sure. He sighed.

"You don't seem to like me very much."

"What gave you that impression? I barely know you."

"At the moment you are currently staring at me like you're about to attack me. You did the same thing at lunch after I asked Alec if I knew him."

"Sorry..." I mumbled.

"No, it's fine. I get it, I'm in your territory."

"Keep your voice down." I warned. "You don't want any of them to hear that. They start asking questions."

"Right, I'm not very good at the whole "secret" thing, you know?" He whispered.

"I wasn't either, but you learn to be." He was silent for a moment.

"I'm just going to get this out in the open now. You were probably wondering why no one else seemed threatened by my presence today in school. For the humans, I'm sure you already know how vamp- I mean certain beauty fools them. As for the others of the group, that probably was my...charm..." He gave me a very obvious wink.

"Your what?" He leaned very close to my ear.

"My gift." He spoke quietly.

"I knew it!" I said as he pulled away and smiled.

"I'm guessing your a shield then since it didn't appear to work on you?"

"Nope, not a shield."

"So you aren't gifted then?"

"Again with the voice." We both stood up since we had our shoes on. We has jazz class first.

"Sorry."

"I'm gifted, but they work weird."

"They? As in more than one?!"

"Shhhhhh!" We started to move into the dance room I had just came out of and began to stretch. Luckily no one else was here yet and Nico was off doing something else.

"Well?"

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"Nope." He raised an eyebrow at me. "How do I know you aren't just trying to collect information on me?"

"Wow, you are paranoid."

"I am not."

"How do I know you aren't trying to get info on me. With that look in your eye I bet you're an axe murderer."

"An axe murderer?!"

"Shhhhhh!" He mocked. I laughed.

"Funny."

"You know, if you get to know me, I can promise you I actually am funny."

"Just how do I know that I want to get to know you?"

"You don't. I guess I should have expected this reaction...after all, having your parents in the Volturi seems to bring you a lot of hate."

"A part of the what?"

"You've never heard of the...never mind then!"

"You aren't helping your case here."

"Trust me, actually I am..."

After that, the rest of the dance team started pouring in. There was only about seven of us, eight of us now including Kaleb. To my surprise he was actually a very good dancer. He was just about at my technique level. I guess that sound snobbish, but dancing with people younger than me kind of makes an experience gap. And of course, Nico decided to put a lift in the combo we were doing, and of course Kaleb and I had to do it. Basically, it was like the jump in _Dirty Dancing ,_ but if that isn't clear enough, I had to run at him and he grabbed my hips so I lifted up over his head as flat as a board. We got it on our first try which almost never happens when you do lifts. Imagine my shock on that one. We talked a little more during class too. Maybe he really wasn't the threatening creature I thought he was. I'm not pushing that thought aside just yet though. He could be a wolf in sheep's clothing for all I knew about him.

"Hey!" Kaleb shouted as he caught up to me. Class had just ended so we were headed out to the parking lot.

"Hey."

"I just have to say, you are like seriously good. Are you a professional?"

"Nope, I've just been dancing for a long time. Thanks though, I'll take that as a compliment. What about you? You aren't so bad yourself."

"You really mean it?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't."

"Thanks!"

"That lift went super well today..." I said after a few moments of silence.

"Oh my gosh, I was terrified of what would happen if I dropped you!"

"You didn't look it."

"Well I was. Mainly I was concerned if you would shoot me with lazer beams coming out of your eyes or something."

"Really? Lazer beams?"

"You didn't tell me what your gifts were so I'm left to guess."

"That one was kind of close."

"So you shoot stuff out of your eyes?"

"No, but it has to do with an eye."

"I've gotta think about it. I'll give you a better guess tomorrow." I laughed.

"Okay then. But to be fair I guessed about yours too in a sense. You also didn't give me details on your gift either. I just know you freakily control people."

"Not exactly." Just then we heard a car honk it's horn. I could tell it was Hunter's car.

"Well that's my ride. See you tomorrow." I gave a quick wave which he gladly returned. Once I got in Hunter's car he laughed.

"What?"

"Is that the new kid you were so paranoid about earlier?"

"Ed told you."

"Well after you stormed off to get ready for dance, Ed didn't really know what to do so he asked me and I told him to just let you blow off some steam and let Lorne deal with it when he gets home."

"Traitor."

"Hey, he was just worried about you. That doesn't make him a traitor."

"It was supposed to be confidential until I could prove that he was a threat."

"You looked like you were being friendly to the guy just now...still think he's a threat?"

"I don't think so, but I'm not wiping the option off the table yet."

Although I had just met Kaleb today, his actions don't indicate that he's here to threaten us. I suppose that's a good thing at the moment. I'm just hoping that this isn't some sort of façade to fool us. Time will tell I suppose.


	9. Chapter 9: Homecoming Nightmare

The night of homecoming fell upon us in what felt like lightning speed. Though I was expected to go out and "make memories" as Lorne told me, I couldn't shake the horrible feeling that I had. Something was _off._ Although, maybe this is a good thing. Our progress on further developing any sort of idea about this predicament I got us all in has gone stagnant. Maybe this bad feeling will lead to some answers. I will remain hopeful.

But that was hard when Grace was plucking at my eyebrows with a tweezer.

"Would you hold still?!" She asked me exasperatingly.

"Sorry." I mumbled. "Not my fault you are torturing me."

"Quit whining! I'm almost done. It's not like your eyebrows are that bad! They are actually perfect, except for the few stray hairs which I'm almost done getting rid of."

"And you do this to your eyebrows?"

"Yeah because otherwise I'd have rabid squirrels on my face."

Her eyebrows were nice, I'd have to admit that. I thought that Grace was actually really pretty for a human. I mean sure, Josie and McKayla were what everyone thought beauty should be in this generation. Grace however was different. She lives by her own definition of beauty and does what she wants to with her makeup and hair regardless of what the current trends are. Don't get me wrong, I love Josie and McKayla, but that's a trait I've always admired about Grace. I wish someday I'll have the courage to stand up to social norms like she does. But for now, I'll stay in my little bubble.

"Alrighty, done. So makeup and eyebrows, check..." She drew a check mark in the air, crossing the items off her imaginary list.

"Why are they separate? You filled my brows in didn't you?"

"Yes but the makeup and the plucking were two separate tasks, my dear. Now onto the dress and shoes!" She laughed as I groaned.

Lorne had been kind enough to take us dress shopping this afternoon after school. He was just so ecstatic that I was going to a social event on purpose that he decided to buy my dress. He bought Grace's as well and paid some lady at a kiosk to curl our hair. As much as I wanted to kill him for it because we both had brought money to pay for our own stuff, I thought it was a sweet gesture. He was just too kind.

"Come on Evie! You promised me at the store that you were going to at least try to have fun with this!"

"I know, I know, sorry. I'm trying." I apologized again, grabbing my dress and shoes from her hands. She had gotten her dress on already before helping me out so we would have enough time to do what was needed to be ready.

"I know you aren't a social butterfly, but it's just us, you know? Rob and I picked a corner of the room last year and we let people come to us. Even your grumpy brother had fun. Although he was mainly concerned with what was going on with you."

"What was going on with me?"

"Mental hospital, duh. I'm so glad you came back at the end of last year though!"

"Oh yeah, me too."

I had almost forgotten about my cover story. It wasn't hard to act like I had been in a mental hospital _that time._ I had plenty of experience. Sometimes I wished we could tell people the truth about us, and about all this supernatural crap. I suppose it was better kept secret though, even if it did make life more difficult. Just imagine how life would be if humans _knew_ about us.

"Okay, quit procrastinating! You have to change now. Otherwise, we will be late!"

"Fashionable late." I joked. She giggled in response.

"Right. I'll meet you downstairs." She started to move out of my room.

"Hey Grace!" I called once she took a few steps away from the doorframe. She turned around. "Thanks...for helping me today."

"You are very welcome." She smiled as she moved to the stairs, her black heels clicking against the floor with every step.

I shut the bedroom door and changed into the dress. It felt strange to wear something like this. The dress itself was pretty enough I suppose. The top part was a gray material covered with black lace that ended about a little ways below my chest with three black buttons in the middle. It had two straps that settled off my shoulders, leaving the top of my chest and shoulders exposed. The bottom part of the dress was black and went down to the middle of my thighs. I thought it was kind of short but nothing else really stuck out to me. I figured this dress would do.

I had to stare at myself in the mirror for a long time before I felt confident enough to even want to leave. The dark brown curls that cascaded down around my body framed my face in a way that made me look older...no not older...maybe more mature? That, coupled with the fact that the dress was form fitting and clung to the small curves that I had made it seem like I could pass for an adult. Although looking at all the makeup on my face, it's possible that I looked like a child who decided to put on her mother's lipstick to play dress up. Grace did an amazing job with my makeup, it was flawless...I just felt flawed I guess. My thoughts were contradictory. In any case, I couldn't stay in my room forever. Taking a few steps back away from the full body mirror, I put on the grey heels and walked out of the room.

"Oh! She's coming!" I heard Lorne exclaim as I made my way down the stairs.

"Try not to scare her with the camera..." Ed warned.

"I won't scare her! She's surprisingly photogenic anyway."

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs for a moment. I know this wasn't such a big deal, but I knew all my _brothers_ were waiting to see me as well as Alec. I had to admit that I was a little worried to hear what they had to say about my current appearance. I took a deep breath and forced myself to move into the living room where everyone was waiting for me. Grace sat on the couch next to Jonah and Connor, who were staring at me wide eyed. She gave me a thumbs up.

"Oh my goodness!" Lorne took my face and nearly squished it in his hands. "You looks so grown up."

"Yeah, she looks like a cute baby prostitute." Caleb laughed.

"Really?" I asked him. I guess the disappointment was obvious in my voice because he shook his head frantically.

"No, I was just kidding around. You look good sis." Hunter smacked him on the back of the head lightly. "What was that for? I called her cute anyways!" He just rolled his eyes at him before giving me a quick wink.

"I need a picture!" Lorne exclaimed before dragging me back to the stairs. He placed my hand on the banister and told me to smile. He took at least five pictures with the flash before summoning Ed and the others over.

"Where's Alec?" I asked when I noticed he wasn't there.

"Huh?" I heard his voice say as his bedroom door hit the wall.

"Have you been up there this whole time?"

"No, he went to go get his dorky suspenders on." Jonah said moving next to me. He wore a black shirt and dress pants with a light gray tie. His tie matched the light grey color that was in the fabric of Grace's black and grey dress.

"Don't worry Alec! I still think you are very fashionable." Grace shouted up the stairs at him.

"Thanks." He chuckled, descending to meet us. "You look very nice."

"Well thank you kind sir." She pretended to tip a hat at him like some sort of southern gentleman would. Then he turned to me.

We both froze for a moment, taking the other in. Alec had slicked back his hair and put it back into a small ponytail that only extended about an inch or two past the band that held it in place. A few stray hairs made their way to frame his face with a few strands sitting in between his eyes. He wore a white button-up shirt with black slacks and a black bow tie. He also wore black suspenders which, yes, were just a little bit dorky. But in all honestly, between the bow tie and the suspenders, dorky looked good on him.

"Well, don't you look handsome?" I said, breaking the silence. He stayed quiet.

"Alec buddy..." Jonah smacked his back a few times. "I get that she's shorter than you, but her eyes are a little higher than that." That's when I noticed where his eyes really were. The dress didn't even show that much skin though. The sweetheart neckline was a little bit low possibly...but still!

"Sorry, uh, Evie...you look really pretty." He stumbled over his words just a little bit.

"Alright friends! Look here and smile!" Lorne exclaimed as another flash went off. I wasn't certain that we had enough time to smile before the flash went off. "Now Ed, I need you to get one with Evie!"

"Do we have to take this many pictures?" Ed asked Lorne, silently pleading for this to be over. He was not a picture person.

"Yes! I got one with you and the boys before so now I need one with you and Evie." He sighed but reluctantly trudged next to me.

"Ed act like you like me or something." I told him. He smiled sarcastically at me as the flash went off.

"Delete that..." He gasped.

"Uh, no! It was cute! Can you get closer to her, she doesn't bite."

"Are you sure Mr. M?" Grace asked. "I think she looks like a biter." I shot her a glare, which she just laughed at.

"That's what I've been saying!" Connor chuckled as he high fived Grace. It was almost funny how that joke went over her head. I'm more of a biter than any humans would realize...

Ed moved to wrap his arm around my shoulders. I didn't know what to do, so I copied his motion.

"It's funny, you're acting like this is killing you."

"Oh it is..." We both laughed as another camera flash went off. "Okay, I'm done!" He moved quickly back to Lorne's side and took the camera out of his hands. "Your turn."

Lorne stood next to me in a similar fashion to Ed. You could tell Ed was trying to get back at Lorne for making him take so many pictures. He literally took so many pictures at any angle possible.

"Ed honey..."

"Smile for the camera!" He got the camera right in Lorne's face and snapped the picture. At least he was kind enough to turn the flash off.

"Oh my gosh, I get it! I promise no more pictures tonight. I'll go take the kids to the school and be back in a little bit."

Once we got to the school, we went inside and found Rob, Josie, and McKayla. They had already picked a corner for us to call our own for tonight. They picked the part of the gym where a few tables were set up to give us places to sit and put down our belongings.

"Well look who decided to show up!" Robert yelled over the music.

"Sorry! The girls were taking _forever!"_ Jonah told him.

"Being this hot takes time!" Grace yelled back.

"Hey girlie! You look amazing." Josie told me with a huge smile.

"For real! Who knew there was a human under all those baggy sweaters!" McKayla teased.

"You guys look good too!" I shouted back. My version of shouting was quieter than theirs though.

"Did you guys see Kaleb on your way in?"

"No...oh wait! Alec found him!" Josie exclaimed.

I looked over to see Alec and Kaleb by the entrance to the gym. They seemed to be in a serious conversation about something, until the two of them nearly doubled over with laughter. Once they calmed down, they walked towards us.

"Hey there!" Kaleb placed his jacket down on the table next to McKayla's navy colored shawl. We all responded with some variation of hello. Then he came over to me and grabbed my hands.

"What are you doing?"

"We're dancing!" He told me as he pulled me into a clear space around the center of the gym floor.

"Seriously?"

"Uh, hello, we are DANCERS, this is what we DO."

He spun me around a few times and laughed. Just for fun, I grabbed his hand and spun him around just a little bit too hard so he turned a few times around before he jumped out to land it.

"Like that?" I asked.

The rest of our group joined us soon after that, and then there were 8 of us in our little circle, dancing around like idiots. Well, it took Jonah and Alec a little while to warm up to the idea of dancing but I soon got them jumping around a little bit.

There was a moment a little while later where I was astonished by how much fun I was having. Between the colored flashing lights and the dancing (that wasn't really what I would call dancing at all, but for a school dance, it would count at least) I felt timeless. The night felt as though it would never end, and I lived for it.

Growing up I used to hate social events; birthday parties, play dates, dorky middle school dances, all of it. But today it felt okay. I still got to be antisocial, but the seven other people around me were also acting antisocial as well, so we fit.

I felt that way until it was time for the first slow dance. That was when I decided to duck away from the crowd and go "take a break" even though I didn't actually need one. For a while I was the only one sitting back at the table with everyone's stuff. Josie and McKayla both found upperclassmen to dance with, a senior girl asked Rob to dance, and I couldn't locate Grace and Jonah until I saw them circling Kaleb with a couple of freshmen. Kaleb spun around happily in the center.

"Sitting this one out?" A smooth voice asked. Alec stood behind me and smiled. I shrugged.

"It would appear so..."

"And here I thought you would never run out of energy. You've been bouncing of the walls." He moved to stand in front of me, obscuring my view of the others. I looked up at him; his height made me tilt my head quite a ways until I could see his face.

"I'm just not one for slow dancing."

"Really?" He looked back at the crowd of couples swaying to the slow, steady beats. "It looks easy enough."

"I wouldn't know. I've never done it."

"Well there is a first time for everything!" He exclaimed before dramatically extending his hand out to me.

"Is that your way of asking me to dance?" I raised an eyebrow tauntingly. I knew what he wanted of course, I just liked to keep him on his toes.

"Maybe."

I let him pull me up and move us closer to the crowd. He placed one hand on my waist and took one of my hands in his. I placed my other hand on his shoulder. After a couple awkward sways, we ended up getting on the same foot and rocked slowly; our eyes never moved from each other's.

"See, it's easy..."

"I guess so..."

He smiled down at me...regardless of how cold his skin felt to me, I felt warm. The warmth in his smile and the kindness in his eyes— It felt as thought I was melting. I moved closer to him and he rested his chin on the top of my head. I felt the vibration of his chuckle.

"You're cute..."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"What if I told you that you were cute?"

"I wouldn't believe you."

"And maybe I don't believe you..." I looked up at him. He just laughed.

"You don't think you're cute?"

"Well I mean...not really..."

"You're lying."

"Huh?"

"I mean look at you; you're beautiful."

His words caught me off guard. Alec sounded so sure of himself. He stated it like it was a  
fact. I wanted to ask him how he was so sure. I wanted to ask him why he continued to tell me things like that. I wanted to ask him if he was toying with me. The upbeat rhythm of the next song interrupted us before I could utter a word. I was surprised when he continued to sway us around as if the song was stuck on an infinite loop. I guess that's what I get for dancing with a guy at the tail end of a song.

"Don't look at me like that." I suddenly felt a sense of discomfort under his intense gaze. It was like he was studying me.

"Like what?" Our faces were only inches apart now.

"Like I'm some animal in a cage at the zoo."

"I was thinking more of a porcelain statue in a museum..."

"For real?"

"Why do you always doubt me?"

"Because people don't think those things about me."

"Sure they do, they just are too afraid to tell you."

"Yeah right."

"I'm serious. You know, you're kind of infuriating."

"Huh?"

"You are this puzzle that no one can solve. It like these humans are trying to solve one of those weird cube things..."

"Rubik's cube."

"Right. They can't figure it out and neither can I. The only difference between them and myself is that you intrigue me too much to stop trying." I scoffed.

"I intrigue you? So do water balloons and Spongebob."

"It's not quite like that." Alec spun me around before pulling me back into his arms.

"Then what is it?"

"Every day since you found me, I've felt a certain amount of attraction to you, kind of like magnets."

"Oh Alec..." Was all I could say. I was still at a loss for words. Why was he being so open with me?

"Tell me you've felt it too...tell me I'm not out of my mind. It's maddening..."

"Hey you two...the song ended a while ago." Kaleb interrupted. He and Jonah stood in front of us. Kaleb seemed to be teasing us. Jonah looked kind of pissed. I wonder if he heard any of that.

"We're heading out a little early to avoid the mob of cars that will be around when this thing ends." Jonah told us. He looked as though he were about to stare down Alec to death. That was enough of a sign that both he and I moved away from each other simultaneously.

"No don't go in there!" Josie screamed.

"Shush!" Robert yelled back at her. "She can't hear you!" I could see Josie stick her tongue out at him in the darkness of the room.

We were all currently sitting in Robert's basement watching some random horror movie. I wasn't really paying attention to it...I can't stand them; they terrify me. I returned to hiding my face in Josie's shoulder to avoid watching the scene before me.

"She's wearing a white shirt...you know what that means." Grace mumbled.

"What does it mean?" Alec asked curiously. He sat on the other side of me, watching the movie intensely I'm sure. He was laughing like a psychopath at it actually.

"It means somehow she's going to get drenched."

"Why?" The room erupted into various laughs and giggles.

"Well Alec, she's probably not wearing a bra..." Rob explained.

"So?" I could tell it was Jonah who slapped his forehead.

"It means she's going to get drenched so you can see her tits through her shirt."

"Oh..." Alec said awkwardly. I giggled into Josie's shoulder. She repeated my laughter before screaming at the tv. I looked up and saw some demon jumping at the screen. We were both gripping each other and screaming.

"That what you get for laughing at me." I punched Alec in the arm a little too hard.

"Awe, hey Evie, want me to come over there and comfort you ladies, all you have to do is ask." Kaleb told me with a wink. I rolled my eyes.

Just then, I felt a grip on my shoulder and a growl in my ear. I screamed and fell off the couch and onto the floor, smacking my head on the side of the coffee table before hitting the ground. I stayed there for a second and cried.

"Come on guys, leave her alone." Robert said. I saw the light come on as the sinister sounds from the movie stopped. "Are you okay Evie?" I stopped crying but I was still in a ball on the floor shaking like crazy.

"Sorry Evie! I didn't think I would get you that bad!" McKayla apologized.

"It's fine." I said as I sat up. They all gasped at me. "What?"

"I think your tear ducts just burst!" Josie shouted.

"Oh shit!" I said, my hand flew up to my eyes which currently had my stupid bloody tears streaming from them.

"What the hell?" Kaleb questioned. He was confused as to why I was bleeding. Me too buddy...me too...

"Well that's what happens when someone screams so loud they nearly blow the roof off the house!" Jonah covered. "Come on sis, lets go get you cleaned up. You guys can start the movie back up."

"I think she's bleeding from her head too." Alec murmured quietly. He stood up and tilted my head to the side to look at where it hit the coffee table.

"Should we go to the ER?" McKayla questioned fearfully.

"No!" Jonah, Alec, and I shouted at the same time.

"It's not that bad." Alec stated.

"It's not like she's bleeding everywhere." Jonah added.

"It barely even hurts, if it's bad tomorrow, I'll just get it checked out then."

"I'll go help her get it cleaned up." Alec put his hand on my back and started to usher me to the bathroom. "Is there a first aid kit in there?"

"No but there is one in the bathroom on the next floor." Robert told him. "It's on the top shelf of the brown cabinet. I can come show you if you'd like."

"It's alright Rob, we can find it. You guys finish the movie." I smiled, trying to reassure him. He nodded as Alec and I moved upstairs. Once we got to the bathroom, he shut the door.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just got spooked."

"I'm surprised you're scared of that stuff. It's just fiction you know."

"I know, I can't help it." He grabbed my hips and lifted me up onto the counter next to the sink. "What are you doing?"

"Patching you up." He started cleaning out the wound on my head. I was surprised hydrogen peroxide reacted normally when it came in contact with the cut on my head.

"I could have done it myself you know."

"I know."

He smiled and tapped my nose with his index finger. I crinkled my nose in response. His fingers then swiftly moved to open the wrapper of the bandage.

"What can I say, I like taking care of..." He cut himself off as a look for pure fear crossed his features.

"What?"

"Vampires are supposed to have reflections right?"

"Yes."

"Well mine has seemed to disappear."

"What?"

I stood up off the counter to go stand in front of the mirror. My reflection was gone as well. We both stared at each other confused and nearly terrified. I felt a sense of impending doom...it was as though all the evil in the world was trying to bring me to my knees. I could sense that Alec probably felt the same feeling of despair I did. When we looked back at the circular mirror on the wall, we both screamed.

A man stared back at us, his long blonde locks framing his impossible face. But it wasn't just a man...it was _the man_ I was seeing in my visions and the one I saw the night of the vigil. I could feel it deep in my soul. His eyes looked like the one I had...instead of one red iris surrounded by black ink, he had two.

I could hear several screams that seemed muted compared to the strange sounds I was hearing. It was this howling sound that continued to grow louder and more high pitched. The longer that man stared at me, the more sinister he looked. Veins surround his eyes and sharp teeth smiled in my direction. It felt as though I couldn't move; every bone in my body felt as though it was being forced down by this man. I could feel someone shaking me but I couldn't look away from the demonic man.

"Everleigh!"

"It's time to embrace who you are..." The man spoke. I tried to speak but no sound came out. "Don't be afraid of your power..."

And with that, he vanished. The howling came to a sudden stop along with the screams. I felt as though I could move again but the pure evil I felt radiating from the man in the mirror still lingered.

"Everleigh...hey, look at me...look at me!" Alec practically yelled. My eyes met his as the tears started to flow again.

"Did you see that?!"

"Yeah. Was that the..."

"Yes. It was him."

Just then, Jonah ripped open the door, almost taking it off its hinges. Kaleb was behind him.

"What the hell just happened?!"

"The man was in the mirror..."

"What man?!" Kaleb asked me.

"I keep seeing this man in my visions and he just showed up in the mirror."

"I saw him too...he's definitely not one of us!"

"The others just went outside to walk in the woods..."

"Why?!"

"Because they wanted to go summon supernatural creatures or some shit. We were going to follow them until we heard you guys scream." Jonah told us.

"Did you guys feel that strange sense of..."

"Pure evil, despair, doom? Yeah."

"Evie felt it more than I did. He pretty much just popped up and disappeared for me. It was different for you, wasn't it?" Alec asked me. I nodded.

"He told me that it's time to embrace who I am. He also said that I shouldn't be afraid of my power...but that isn't important right now. We have to get everyone else back here now! If he's still out there who know what he will do to them! They're just humans!"

"Oh god this is bad!" Kaleb's hands flew to his head.

"Let's go!" Jonah shouted and with that we all ran at full speed out of the house.

We went out into the dark night. I'm thankful we were vampires because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to see in the dark to maneuver around the trees. It didn't take us long to reach the others. They seemed to stand petrified in a line in front of a rather large clearing. Their continuous screams concerned me. There was nothing there to be screaming at...unless it was...

"Hey!" Jonah screamed at them, running in front of them and waving his hands around. No response.

"What do we do?!" Kaleb asked in a panic. "If they are seeing the same man you guys did..."

Just then, they all erupted into a huge laughing fit.

"Seriously guys?! This isn't funny!" I exclaimed.

"Funny?" They all said simultaneously. "I am not trying to be a source of feeble amusement."

"What the..." Alec trailed off as they spoke again.

"Consider this an introduction of sorts...Jonah and Everleigh...take this to heart. If I can get inside the ignorant minds of your so called friends; I am capable of so much more. I will come to you both in person soon. And as for your new acquaintances that remain unaffected at the moment..."

The four trailed off and turned to face me. I stumbled back until I fell on the ground. The weight in their words sunk into me as I screamed.

"Evie! Evie what the fuck is wrong with you?!" Grace all of a sudden shouted.

We weren't outside anymore.

Josie, Rob, Grace, and McKayla were no longer repeating that strange man's words.

And Alec, Jonah, and Kaleb looked just as confused as the others.

"What's going on?" I asked. My voice was barely audible.

"You must have hit your head pretty damn hard." Jonah told me.

"No I..."

"Should we call 9-1-1?!" McKayla exclaimed. "She seems really out of it!"

"I'll call Ed to come pick us up. Kaleb, you said you needed a ride, _right?"_ Kaleb nodded in Jonah's direction.

"But the man..."

"What man?" Rob asked.

"Evie is just confused guys, okay? When you scare her as badly as you guys did just now, she loses it. That's just from the mental issues she's had."

I knew Jonah was covering for whatever the hell it was we just saw but I wish he wouldn't reduce me to some crazy person who belongs in an institution. At this point I might actually qualify to be there...who knows.

"Well note to self; do not under any circumstances scare Evie." Rob shrugged. "I can call my mom over and she'll be more than happy to drive to the hospital so we don't have to wait."

It was just then that I realized that we were in Rob's basement still. I was laying in the spot I was when I hit my head on the table. Did anything even happen...

I felt my eyes start to close. My eyelids felt so heavy that I couldn't help but allow myself to close them.

"Hello Everleigh...can you hear us?"

Ed? No the voice was way too deep to be him.

I opened my eyes and instantly regretted it. A pair of red eyes stared at me. They belonged to a rather muscular man that I didn't know.

I couldn't help the scream that broke through the awkward silence.

"Oh come on! There is no way that I am as scary as that creepy man you keep talking about...you don't happen to know his name do you?"

"Who are you?!"

"Felix."

"What an introduction..." I mumbled to myself sarcastically before I could stop myself. He chuckled.

"I am part of the Volturi guard."

"Am I supposed to know what that is?"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. I repeated his motion. If this weird ass kidnaped me, I was screwed. Although I would admit, I have heard the word "Volturi" spoken before I think. He again gave me another chuckle.

"Well aren't you a tough little one. And powerful too by the sounds of it. Lorne speaks very highly of your gifts."

"How do you know Lorne?" I tried to push myself up but slipped back down on the silk bedsheets of a rather large bed. The red and gold themed room seemed too lavish to be in a room close to home. "Where am I?"

"Not far from the place where your coven resides. Lorne happens to be a dear uh...friend...of mine."

"Right."

"Are you always such a skeptic?"

"It's not like some psychopath just screwed around with my friends and messed with my brain and now I'm sitting here having a random conversation with a stranger. My apologies." Another chuckle. "Am I really that funny to you?"

"I suppose it is my turn to apologize to you. In my defense, most young' ins like you are absolutely terrified of me."

"Should I be? If you were going to kill me, you would have done it while I was unconscious, right?" I tried to sound confident, but I was failing miserably. "Where's Lorne? Or any of the rest of my family. I want to go home!"

"Relax. They are downstairs. Kaleb suggested that just Lorne, Edward, and your twin come to sort out this situation. Good call on that kid's part."

"You know Kaleb too?"

"You really are clueless kid. Damn, I feel kind of bad for giving you a hard time, but Lorne really hasn't told you or your brother anything."

"Can I see them?"

"I would wait until they are done...you don't need to hear everything Demetri is saying to them."

"Bull." I muttered before humming a few notes. He instantly fell under my influence. I haven't actually used my ability on someone in a while, so I prayed that it wasn't rusty.

"Why am I here?"

"The Volturi is currently investigating a series of so called accidents that have been occurring on the continent. The most recent being a car accident involving three children in this town."

"That didn't answer my question..." Looks like I am a bit rusty. "Why am I here?"

"We did not realize that Lorne has set up his coven in this area, and having not met you or your brother yet, once Kaleb met you two in school, Aro deemed it necessary to make sure the pair of your were in control. As for your other new coven member, Kaleb was able to tell that he wasn't a threat himself, so no further investigation was needed."

"Who's Aro?"

"One of the leaders of the Volturi, the other two being Caius and Marcus."

"Why are you investigating the accident?"

"We are working in conjunction with Edward to determine what supernatural force caused the accidents."

"So the accident and others like it weren't necessarily accidents?"

"Well isn't that an impressive talent." Another man's voice said. I looked to the doorway of the bedroom to find a short man with spiky blonde hair. "Poor Felix, succumbed to a child's games."

"Are you next then?" I knew I should have bit my tongue but I was angry. Have Ed and Lorne been keeping this from us? Obviously these guys know more of our situation then I do. The man was in front of me in an instant, a hand wrapped around my throat.

"Oh child, I dare you to even try it. I assume Felix thought you were harmless but with the stories your family has told me, I won't make the same mistake."

"Demetri!" Kaleb's voice rang out. "Let her go." The blonde hissed at me before releasing his grip and rushing at top speed away to the other side of the room. "Felix, would you mind escorting the Morgynsteins out?" The muscular man didn't move. "Felix!"

"With all due respect, dear _Everleigh_ has him under her influence." I snapped my fingers, releasing Felix who blinked rapidly before standing up.

"Huh?"

"Sorry." I apologized quickly. "I shouldn't have done that."

"That's impressive kid. Say, how large of a group can you project to?"

"Felix she really needs to get going I believe. If you escort the rest of the Morgynsteins out, I will tend to Everleigh and bring her down shortly." Felix winked at me.

"See you around kid."

"Demetri you can go with him." He complied and followed Felix out.

"I'm sorry about them, they are just doing their job."

"What the hell is going on?"

"It is a really long story but to make it short basically we think you somehow got possessed by a demon who man you see all sorts of shit. It's possible its the one who keeps appearing in your visions."

"None of this makes sense!"

"I know, but it will be okay. Lorne and Ed will explain it to you, I'm sure. I am truly sorry about the circumstances in which you were to find out about my...family I guess you could say."

"Volturi?"

"We are basically the rulers of the vampire world. My father is one of the leaders."

"So what does that make you?"

"It's complicated. I would like to give you a more thorough explanation. Do you think you could meet me tomorrow? Bring Jonah and Alec as well maybe?"

"How do I know your uh...family...isn't going to your know..." I mumbled and pretended to choke myself like Demetri had done.

"I can promise that no harm will come to you. We'll meet on your terms. I never meant for you to have to find out like this."

"It's okay." I tried to reassure him. "It's not like you are the one going crazy."

"You aren't. We just have to help you get your thoughts straightened out."

I found the strength to push myself up out of the bed and stood up. Kaleb practically carried me down the dark hallway and to the front door. Once we were outside I saw Lorne, Ed, and a very concerned looking Jonah. He rushed over to me and hugged me. I don't think we've hugged in a while. Strange.

"Scare me like that again and you're dead."

"Scare you?" I couldn't find any other words so I just dropped it. I gave a small wave to Kaleb before walking past Ed and Lorne to get in the car.

They didn't try to talk to me until we were safely in the house after the awkward car ride home.


End file.
